


bright as the sky

by neonheartbeat



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Blood and Injury, Breastfeeding, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, F/M, Forced Pregnancy, Gen, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Multi, Murder, No Romance, No Sex, No Smut, Other, Past Child Abuse, Post-Nuclear War, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, reference to miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:15:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28213794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonheartbeat/pseuds/neonheartbeat
Summary: "where must we go, we who roam this bitter wasteland, in search of our better selves?"- THE LAST HISTORY WOMAN~~~~~~~~~~~the nuclear wars have abated. the water wars have gone on. far in the northwest quarter of a nameless land, a lone immortan has created a vast stronghold where he rules, unquestioned.out in the salt flats, a man is running.deep in a war rig, a secret's being guarded.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux & Rose Tico & Other(s), Poe Dameron & Finn, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey & Rose Tico & Kaydel Ko Connix & Bazine Netal & Paige Tico, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 40
Kudos: 60





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> READ THE TAGS. This is going to be very much in the vein of Mad Max: Fury Road especially the themes of sexual slavery, forced birth/breeding, nonconsensual uses of bodies for various gross purposes, trafficking, and violence. If it's not for you at a glance through the tags, I recommend clicking out. I'll also be updated as per usual with tags as I go along.
> 
> Yes, there will be a HEA. No, you read the tags right, there's no explicit romance or sexual attraction in this story. I am aware this is out of the normal scope of my usual works, and at this point in 2020 I am just burned out. If you're still on board, enjoy!

Nothing stretched on for miles and miles of parched, dry-baked, hot earth and jagged rock. Even the two-headed lizards, unfortunate little half-life things that they were, barely skittered in the dusty orange sand. Overhead, the sky was flat and blind, blue in vague tint only, almost yellow, as featureless and blank as all the earth the eye could see. 

The man and his heavily modified vehicle were the only blots of life in all that wasteland. He stood, legs apart, head down, wearing dirt-caked boots and pants so filthy that the original color and material were a mystery, pissing into the sand.

_ Hello? Where are you? _

He shook off the voice in head like a horse shaking off a fly. In front of him, a two-headed lizard crawled out from under a shady rock, attracted by the sound of running water. It was thirsty. It wiggled closer, and closer, until with a  _ crunch _ the man’s boot came down and smashed it, a filthy hand snatching the remnants of it to his mouth, somewhere under the matted beard. He was hungry, and its body had moisture. A two-for-one, they used to call that. Didn’t see many of those anymore.

Behind him, the distant roar of engines snarling alerted his brain into a whirling fog of adrenaline. He jerked his body back into the chassis of his vehicle, a Ford Falcon that had been painted to camouflage it with the brown and red dirt of the wastes, and ignited the engine, checking the mirrors wildly as he skidded down the shallow incline of the cliff’s face to even, low ground. He’d be able to see them coming out there, in the flatlands. Might even be able to use the rear-mounted gun, scare them off, even though he’d run out of bullets long ago and only had handmade blanks. 

In his rearview mirror, he could see the tires, the flying banners, the roaring smoke. 

In his heart, he knew he didn’t stand a fucking chance.

* * *

It took a single impact of an explosive harpoon to rip the tires off, to send him hurtling roof over tires into the sand. They ripped the hood off his Falcon, which was out of nothing more than spite: spearing up someone like him on the run was a once in a lifetime chance, especially for a gaggle of Storm Boys at the end of their half-lives. He crawled out in the sand, gasping for air. 

They let him get a few feet away before chaining his hands together and forcing him to run behind the wreck of his car, laughing and throwing scraps at him as he hobbled along in the dust, coughing on poisoned air, blistering his feet in their boots.

_ Survive. I have to survive. I have to live.  _

There was no other option but to go with them, so he did. 

All evening he staggered after them, running: all night the same, and the morning brought him boots full of blood and a mouth full of dust and being taken to the caverns of the Citadel he knew so well and hated so much, into a garage cut into rock where sparks flew and fire burned, where he was finally given half a mouthful of precious water before he was stripped from head to toe, shorn like an animal, and branded on the back of his neck with the Immortan’s sigil: a diamond on a steering wheel, right over where he’d cut it away before. Holiest of holies. The cave reeked of cooking flesh, and his stomach turned.

They strapped him down, tied him and chained him and gagged him so he couldn’t move, couldn’t bite, while the Organic Mechanic, a pair of illuminated goggles strapped on his eyes, carefully tattooed his statistics onto his back:

**ht 19 hands No lumps No bumps Full life Clear** **  
** **170 lb Two good eyes No busted limbs  
** **Piss OK Genitals intact  
** **REN Multiple scars Heals fast** **  
** **O- High Octane** **  
** **TBU: UNIVERSAL DONOR  
** **Found on Salt Flats  
** **KEEP MUZZLED: FERAL**

After the blood had been cursorily wiped off, he’d been hung up in a cage with the other universal donors, a needle jammed into his arm: a fresh dose of good full-life blood available for anyone to take a hit off. Muzzled, according to the directions inked into his back, muzzled with iron and leather.

People came. People went. He reminded himself to breathe, and breathe, and breathe, because another breath meant he was alive, and being alive meant he was surviving.

* * *

She came to him at night, in half-dreams: the girl— exactly how she’d looked. Underfed, gangly and long-limbed and skinny, with a pointed nose and matted brown hair, but no lumps or bumps or missing digits. A treasure, the Immortan had called her— called them all, and entrusted him to bring him the girl. He’d gone to the hut she was living in, somewhere up on the ridge of the Citadel, reeking of piss and shit. She’d known someone was sniffing around, called out  _ hello, where are you?  _ as she’d scuttled to the makeshift door, the hut fashioned out of rust scrap nobody wanted or cared about. 

He’d lied.  _ I’m here to help, I promise. Come with me and you’ll never be hungry again. _ And the little starveling had gone with him.

But why shouldn’t she have gone with him? He’d been half a boy, nineteen or twenty, full-life and powerful back then. And she...

_ Dead, and she’s dead. I know she’s dead by now, or she wouldn’t be haunting me. _

Maybe he was confusing her with the others. There had been so many others. The Immortan kept his Wives locked away tight in the Bio Dome, where there were green things and water: heaven on earth, the people outside whispered to each other with plaintive, worshipful gazes upward. That was the Immortan’s greatest desire: not guzzoline or water or bullets, but a  _ son, _ a son with a full life in his own image, a son who could be a man. An heir to the kingdom he’d created.

_ Hello? Where are you? _

He pretended for a moment, hanging in his cage, that he was in the green Bio Dome, with water and green things, and that the little girl was there. That all the little girls were there, all the ones he’d been ordered to bring during his time: and that they were happy...

_ I'm here to help. Promise. _

“Hey. Bloodbag.” A glance downward confirmed that a Storm Boy was rattling the chain, glaring up at him. Shaved bald except for a single topknot of copper-glinting hair, this one was closer to a full-life than most, though still half-life, by the boils on his shoulder: he was painted salt-white and had three thick black lines tattooed on his left forearm. “I need a top-up,” he was saying to someone else, someone out of sight. “Just got back from riding for three days straight in the Dust Lake.”

“Have what you like. He’s a raging feral.” There was a nasty laugh from below, where the Organic Mechanic was working. “Ain’t that right, Ren?”

“He’s lost that name,” snapped the Storm Boy, and shoved the other end of the needle into his arm, sighing as blood filled him. “Shine, that’s high-octane, and no mistake.” He coughed. It sounded like his half-life would be running dry soon. 

The man shut his eyes, his fingers going cold as his blood drained out, slow and sure. The dreams were all lies, and the Organic Mechanic was right. He was nameless. He wasn’t even a man anymore: just a breathing animal bent on survival, and only survival.

* * *

The sun was hot, as it always was, bearing down on the close-cropped head of the woman who walked with purpose towards the long-bellied, iron-gray body of the War Rig waiting to descend to the ground below. The back of her neck bore a raised brand: a steering wheel with a diamond inside, or on top, maybe: it was hard to tell. The top half of her windburnt head was smeared in black grease, and a thin, long scar ran from her right temple to her right cheek, her pale blue eyes a startling contrast to the paint and dust.

With a great creak and groan, the platform lowered to the ground, run by sheer manpower: Storm Pups painted white with single black stripes on their shoulders ran the wheels needed to ease the rig down to the floor of the canyon. The woman hefted herself into the driver’s seat and waited, peering through the dust-grimed windscreen. 

People were gathering expectantly: some had been waiting since dawn. Ragged people, broken people, people with sores and lumps and bumps and missing limbs— but the one thing they all had in common was this: they held buckets, trays, plastic jugs. Anything, anything that could hold what they were waiting for.

_ Poor scum, _ thought Imperator Phasma coolly, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. All dying of poisoned air and earth. First the gas wars, then the water wars, then the thermonuclear bombs: the world was dying, and everyone knew it. She’d never known any other life than killing to survive, to eat, to live another day, and she didn’t much care how the world went on from there. 

“Rev it up!” screamed a voice from above, bringing Phasma’s attention to the hole cut high up in the cliffside, where the Immortan was known to make his scanty appearances. “Cry out and praise heaven for your redeemer! For the Immortan!”

The crowd cried, cheered, wailed, waved: out from the shadows stepped the pale shape of the Immortan himself, too far away to make out. Phasma felt a prickle edge up her spine.  _ A god. The only god we have out here in this wilderness.  _ He was speaking, though, and she made herself listen. 

“Once again, I send my guzzoline and my water to trade at the Bullet Farm! Once again, I salute my Imperator, Phasma, loyal and true!”

Phasma laced her fingers together in a triangle, knuckle to knuckle, and whispered, “V-8” in a soft prayer as the chorus was taken up from around her:  _ “V-8! V-8!” _ She kissed her thumbs and lowered her hands, checking her valves and making sure the engine was primed and ready to go as the Immortan blessed his faithful with a flood of water from on high, as the people screamed and fought each other to get to the water that cascaded down on their heads, mudding around their feet. This would be a run like the others, she knew, a week’s time there and back, and she’d be home again. 

_ Loyal and true. _ The unspoken message wasn’t lost on her: the implication that she was the trustworthy Imperator, the one who would fulfill what others had been unable to do. Traitorous, weak-willed men. She pressed her index fingers together and broke the connection with her nose.  _ Break that circuit. No bad luck here. _ Who ran away from the Citadel? Insane dead men, that was who. 

The engines were starting, her convoy gearing up to accompany her out into the wild. Phasa threw the Rig into gear and pulled out, staring straight ahead on the road.

* * *

Crook couldn’t breathe.

Really, that was the least of her worries, though. The biggest concern was that they were crammed into the cargo hold of a War Rig, and nobody had seen them: the second concern was that she was thirsty as a desert, and maybe the third was that she couldn’t breathe. It was hard to work out which was the biggest worry.

_ Oh, wait. No, the biggest one is Hang and the Gink, ‘cause they’re pregnant.  _ That was important to remember: even if Imperator Phasma caught them, she wouldn’t kill those two. The Immortan would have her guts for a necklace if she did that.

“I can’t move down here,” whispered the Pearl, her sweat-gleaming face very close and very pale in the scarce light from above, where the cracks shined light down in streaks. 

“Shh,” hissed Braith, who looked even worse than the Pearl: her yellowy hair was coming out of its knots and sticking to her cheeks. “Phasma’ll hear us, and then she’ll kill us dead.”

Hang leaned over from where she was clinging to the Pearl. “If we die, it’s all your fault, Crook.” She looked very like her younger sister: the same pretty dark eyes that the Organic Mechanic had said were like cats’ eyes, the same fair skin, the same black hair.

“We’re not gonna die,” said Crook, feeling more sure of herself. “We’re going to get out of here. We’re going to the Green Place. Miss Loanie said it’s not that far, a place we can get to if we had a Rig, yeah? Out beyond the road, east. East’s where the sun comes up. So we’re going South now, to the Bullet Farm, which means we got to hook a left off the road when they ain’t looking.”

“They’re always looking,” said the Gink, her long, delicate hands cupping her rounded belly. “‘And what do you think the Immortan’ll do when he realizes we ain’t there?”

“Have a cow for all I care,” said Crook rudely. “Birth a flea. Piss himself. He can rot.”

“Crook!” said Braith, shocked. “We had water, all the water and green things we could have wanted there! He was kind!”

“Yeah, and no freedom. Scrap that.” Crook wriggled up and peered through the hatch’s crack, up into the cab. “She’s still driving. Right. Once she gets the signal from the Farm, he always goes back to the Dome, and  _ if _ he goes looking for us, that buys us about ten minutes to get off the road before he starts peering through those binocs of his.” She wiped sweat off her nose and forehead. All her sister-wives were dressed in scanty white gowns that had once been clean, which served two purposes: a blot of white on the red ground was easily seen, and the thin, flimsy fabric offered no protection against the heat and wind of outside. They didn’t even have shoes, except for the Pearl, who’d stolen a too-big set of dirty boots from a Storm Boy on the way out, and why would they have ever? A life lived inside, on soft carpets from ancient times, on grass, on smooth cool floors, on your back in a bed: you didn’t need shoes to live like that.

Crook remembered. She remembered a time before she’d had the name the Immortan had given her. A time when her feet hadn’t been so tender, when she’d run them over rocks and sand, filthy and half-feral and starving— but free. 

_ The Green Place, where there are many children and many mothers and no masters, no Immortan. No locked doors, and all the fruit and veg you can eat. Water. Light.  _

_ Freedom. _

* * *

Phasma looked up ahead. The signal was flashing, a gleaming spot of light on the horizon, the Bullet Farm’s foundries billowing black smoke. A cursory glance at the rearview confirmed it: a flashing dot of mirrored light from on high in the Citadel said  _ message received, all on the way. _

Good. She leaned back and checked her systems: guzzoline was good, water tank was attached and safe. Nothing felt out of the ordinary, and she had a whole convoy for protection, armed to the teeth. She settled in for a pleasant trip.

The last thing Phasma thought before the blade found her jugular was  _ I didn’t think… _


	2. Chapter 2

“Boss! Boss! Come quick!”

Immortan Snoke slammed his right hand man aside and peered through the spyglass mounted to the highest window in the Citadel. “What is it?” he demanded.

“Phasma’s gone off course into the wasteland, boss. The War Rig’s turned east.”

Snoke in his prime had been a tall, rawboned man with piercing blue eyes: old age had given him liver spots and missing teeth, but his fury as he peered through the glass was no less powerful. “Off course? Our Phasma? Why?”

“Dunno. Convoy’s following.” Imperator Canady was a craggy old man who sported an eyepatch and a massive shoulder-plate of old medallions that rattled as he moved. “No reason for her to stray. Unless she’s running. Or stealing something.”

“What would she steal?” hissed Snoke. “She’s got guzzoline and water, there’s nothing else more precious here than…” His words died abruptly, his thoughts sharpened to a point: there  _ was _ something precious in the Citadel, five things in fact, and he turned and stormed for the door to the Bio Dome as fast as his legs could take him.

“Pearl!” he bellowed, his voice echoing off the empty stone walls as he shuffled through the gardens, unlocked the vault door, clambered inside the tunnel. “My treasures! Knowing Hang! Braith! Gink! Crook! Where are you? _ ” _

The tunnel ended in a room, a well-lit, prettily kept room with old rugs in beautiful patterns laid out, a pool of fresh water in the middle for bathing, and five plastic school-chairs lined up in front of a blackboard: shelves of books, and comfortable chairs, and wall hangings. The hangings had all been torn down, and on the white-washed walls, on the blackboard, on the floor was written in chalk:

WE ARE NOT THINGS

Over and over it repeated itself like a mantra, and the Immortan heard the loud, unmistakable snick of a shotgun being cocked. He whirled and saw Miss Loanie, gray-haired and weathered, her History Woman tattoos blurring into unreadability, aiming right at him from the doorway to the bedroom the Wives had shared. “Where are they?” he screamed, lunging for her. “What’s Phasma done?”

“Phasma?” croaked Miss Loanie, and misfired, dropping the shotgun. “Nothing! She ain’t muddled up in this: they stowed away all on their own. Do whatever you like. You can't stop 'em. They’re going far away from you, you old man, and they’ll never touch you again.”

* * *

“Move! Move!”

The hue and cry roused the bloodbag out of a half-sleep, dazed and weak from loss. Outside the bars of his suspended cage, the Storm Boys were screaming, gathering their gear, running. Something was happening, but it was outside, so it didn’t concern him. He let his eyes flutter shut again. 

“I want to go!” a voice was shouting very close by, and he cracked an eyelid open to see the same Storm Boy with the topknot and the three bars struggling to unhook himself from the needle. “Wait, wait for me! I’ve got a V-8 with a steel coil and nitrous ready to burn, let me go!”

Another one laughed, stopping by him. “You’re out of time, Hux. The Immortan’s practically driving out himself already.”

“Then I’ll let him crush me under his wheels and ride eternal to Valhalla!” screamed Hux, the light of a fanatic in his eyes. “And you’ll all witness me!”

“You can’t go. You’re still sucking up blood from that feral.” That was the other one, grinning. “You can’t even drive.”

“I can! I’ll take the bloodbag with me, tie him to the hood. Get the Organic Mechanic! Help me get him down.”

That was how, thirty minutes later, the bloodbag found himself tied to a cross mounted on the front of an ancient Chevrolet coupe, his arms hooked and tied behind his back, his face still muzzled, and a needle stuck into his chest, feeding a flexible tube that interlocked with a chain that led behind him and into the cab of the vehicle, where Hux, the Storm Boy, screamed, whooped, roared, and floored it along with a hundred other rigs, swaying and weaving out into the wasteland, where the sun beat down hot from above.

_ Take me back, take me back to the Citadel, _ he thought in terror, visions of the swaying chain catching on the tires and ripping half his chest away filling his mind. Adrenaline dumped into his system like it would never stop: Hux veered toward a spike-covered car just for the hell of it and his bladder let go. It hadn’t been that full to begin with, but his worn leather pants were still cold and wet in the wind for a moment until the blasting air dried them. He whimpered like a terrified animal, cringing away from the howls and jeers as Hux drove up closer, and closer, and past the convoy with a few other howling Storm Boys. 

The fevered panic of his mind could barely focus, even when Hux fired a harpoon an inch from his ear in an attempt to take down the War Rig. Chaos erupted, fire and dust, and he could only hold on, frantically trying to wrench his hands out of the ties that bound him.  _ Get away, get away, get away safe.  _ The needle burned in his skin. He’d have to get rid of that, too: he was still attached to Hux and that wouldn’t do. 

People were howling, screaming, things were exploding. Things happened, and he saw them one after the other, but his mind was too far gone into panic to understand what was happening, to interpret the color and movement as anything meaningful. He saw tires, flame, a horizon full of boiling dust, and the face of a woman up in the cab of the Rig before he was plunged once again into flailing, lightning-streaked darkness, dirt caking his mouth, blinding him—

His hand was free. He didn’t know how it had happened. He scrambled off the frame and climbed onto the roof of the coupe. Hux was inside, screaming, mouth gleaming silver, a flare in his hands and guzzoline sloshing over the floorboards, and from above the man’s fist came down, smashed the fragile glass canopy, tore the flare out of his white hand, and threw it wide.

Hux over-corrected his turn in his attempt to get his bloodbag off the roof, and the whole car went toppling over, breaking apart in a roll, both men tumbling like ragdolls into the storm as the flare behind them sputtered, died, and burned out.

* * *

Crook drove on into the storm until she could no longer see lights, or anything else. “I think we lost ‘em,” she said, bringing the rig to a stop and turning. Outside, the storm battered at the steel sides, but they were safe inside. “You all right?”

The other four women looked back at her: the Pearl and her sister Hang were both clutching sawed-off shotguns, and the Gink was eyeing up a pistol near her feet like it was a mouse she didn’t want to touch. Braith had a knife and nothing else. “All fine here,” she said quickly. “Did you see that bloodbag mounted up on the coupe? They couldn’t even wait to sap him dry.”

“Slanger,” spat Gink, her hand pressed to the curve of her belly. “Sucking the blood out of people. They’ve already sucked the land dry. What else can they take away?”

“I’d rather die than be a bloodbag,” said Crook with a shudder, listening to the wind roar outside the Rig. “That’s your life inside you, and it don’t belong to anyone but you. Did you get all of the Imp’s clothes off her before you dumped her? Might be she had something useful.”

“Let’s see.” Pearl set the gun aside after unloading it and rolled open a bundle. “Pants, shirt, belts, boots. Socks. Couple pieces of cloth for scarves to keep out the dust. Oh, and a canvas jacket.”

Crook darted for the pile. “I’ll take the boots,” she said, and even though they were too big, her feet felt safe inside. Braith took the shirt, a stained old light woven thing that was falling off her thin shoulders, and the Gink took the belts and a pair of goggles: Hang called the pants and Pearl put the canvas jacket on, rolling the sleeves up. “And I’ll take the scarves, too,” said Crook as an afterthought, winding them around her head: they might be useful, especially if they got another one of these sandstorms. “We should sleep. They can’t drive through this.”

“You sure?” asked Hang, doubtful suddenly. “I heard the Immortan can see in the dark. Got eyes like headlights.”

“Scrap that,” said Crook scornfully. “Don’t you remember the time he was leaving the Gink and made that racket? Knocked into a chair, woke us all up. D’you  _ think _ he has headlight-eyes?”

“Oh,” said Hang, and busied herself adjusting her new pants. 

“I’ll stay up with you,” offered Pearl, clambering over the pile to reach her side. “Better to have another pair of eyes on the lookout.”

“All right. You take the front, and I’ll take the back.” Crook switched places and climbed into the back, propping up the shotgun and looking out the rear of the cab as the rest of the girls huddled up to sleep. “When the sun comes up, we’ll wash.” She stuffed a scrap of rag into a crack in the window, keeping the thundering sand out. Gink snuffed the lamp, and the rig was plunged into darkness, the pounding storm outside the only sound.

The others fell asleep soon, exhaustion and excitement overtaking them despite the storm. Pearl looked back at her, gnawing at her bottom lip. “Crook,” she whispered in the dark, her face illuminated in the flashes of distant lightning.

“Yeah?” whispered Crook back.

“The Green Place. It’s real? You’re certain?”

“Yes. We’ll come on it soon, I’m sure. I saw Miss Loanie’s map. Got it up here, clear as day.” Crook tapped her forehead. 

“How come the Gink’s the oldest but you’re so bossy and know-it-all?” asked Pearl, half-smiling.

“‘Cause the Gink’s got to worry about her baby. I have to worry about all of you.” She turned away and leaned her forehead against the cool metal of the interior, thinking for a moment about the failure of the last try, and the resulting months spent hooked to the sucking tanks with the other Unmothers and their ragdolls. The sweet-sick smell of milk had permeated all of her body so badly that Hang had made her wash down every time she came back to the Dome.  _ It almost took that time, too. Shame. Wasn’t even the Immortan’s. _ To think he was sterile was probably a mortal sin, but it wasn’t like anything viable had come out of those shriveled old balls since before the Water Wars, and the best Imperators were allowed some access to the Dome for guard duty in exchange for things like water and fresh food. She knew that the thing in Hang’s belly, too, likely was about as related to the Immortan as she was.  _ Either Dameron or Finn, just like mine. _ They were the Wives’ favorites, and everyone knew it— if the Immortan knew, he certainly overlooked it.  _ And they’re our friends: got us to the Rig without being seen.  _

Imperator Dameron was a great storyteller. Many a night they’d sat by the pool and listened to him whisper stories of Before, with his bare feet soaking in their water and Miss Loanie giving him fresh veg and fruit and meat. He’d use his hands, sun-dark, to illustrate shapes and movement as his eyes gleamed:  _ Long ago, way back before the world died… _ and then a story about huge pools of water so vast you couldn’t see the other side, or green forests of trees and flowers so high and thick you couldn’t see the sun, populated by fantastical animals he tried to draw for them on the blackboard. Imperator Finn liked to bring little things from his journeys, and would say  _ treasures for the treasures _ as he spread them out on the floor, watching the Pearl and Hang most of all as they gasped over the trinkets: pieces of shining metal, buckles, shapes, beads, bones. He’d tell a story about each one, what it had come from, what it was for:  _ this one’s for combing your hair, this one’s a door-hinge, that one came off a trader from the West Waste. _

Come to think of it, she couldn’t recall who had mentioned the Green Place first: Miss Loanie or one of their favorite Imperators.  _ The Green Place, with many mothers and many children, no locked doors, no masters. Freedom and food and water.  _

The thought of children made her still-producing breasts ache, and she bit her lip: in the rush to leave she’d forgotten her compresses to keep the milk from flowing. One of the scarves was easily wound down and around her chest to hold them close, and after that she rested, or tried to, in a fitful half-sleep, until the rising sun began to cast cool pink light over the barren earth.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is a scene in here that's That One Scene From Grapes of Wrath-esque. If you're squicked by adult breastfeeding skip from the first break to "she re-wrapped her chest". onward we go

Nobody had followed, not a soul for klicks in every direction. They’d lost the convoy, and all the women slid out, stretching and breathing in the hot desert air as they looked out and around as far as they could see. 

“Makes you feel awful, doesn’t it?” asked Braith, her light hair coming undone as she struggled with the water hose, her back to the tank. “Like a gnat. Like nothing. Exposed out here. I’d go mad.”

“Maybe that’s what happened to everyone else,” said the Gink, wrestling with the hose attachment and flipping it on. A gush of cold water flooded out, and they all gathered under it with excited cries, washing their faces and bodies clear of dust and drinking deep. 

“Don’t that just feel shine?” exclaimed the Pearl, grinning. “Next things next, though.” She reached up and pulled the bolt-cutters out of the cab, pointing at the collars they all wore: gold-plated steel, incised with the Immortan’s diamond in the wheel. “These things. Off.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” said Crook, and helped her wrench off hers, snapping the lock at the nape of her neck. Then the rest, one by one, and the Gink got hers off, letting it thud down to the sand. Crook’s neck felt horribly bare and naked without it, the wind too harsh and the water too cold, but she felt more free that she’d felt in years.

“Crook,” said Hang, very white in the face. “There’s—”

She turned, her feet buried in sand, and saw the man.

He was standing awkwardly, another man— a Storm Boy—slung over his shoulders, and as Crook took all of it in she saw why: the Storm Boy was hooked to the man by his blood, a chain connecting them both from a reinforced cuff to a muzzle on the man, a red-running tube disappearing under the neck of his filthy, torn-to-rags shirt. His face was mostly obscured by the muzzle, the forked metal bars that dug into his cheeks long enough to almost poke him in the eyes, but his hair had been hacked off badly and was filthy to the roots, black as night, almost rust-colored in the sun. Tall, and starved-lean, with a build that might once have been powerful but was now anything but—and most importantly, a huge, dirty hand curled around the handle of a shotgun, cocked and pointing right at them.

Nobody moved. The water flowed, and Crook saw the man’s eyes dart towards it, then back to them. He grunted and gestured with the gun, pointing toward the hose. 

“What’s he want?” hissed Braith.

“I think he wants a drink,” said Hang, who hadn’t blinked in almost half a minute. The man dropped his captive Storm Boy, who thumped into the dirt ungracefully, and gestured again, edging on frantic.

“Water,” he finally croaked out, his voice hoarse and ragged from disuse or thirst. “ _ Water.  _ You.” He pointed at the Pearl, who was holding the hose, and beckoned with the gun.

“Go on,” said Crook softly. “Give it to him.” Her mind was spinning: nothing about him looked like a man from the Citadel, this man in a shirt stained with blood and sweat, missing a boot, ragged pants. He was just a bloodbag. A thing to be used. 

_ But we are not things. _

Pearl inched close, step by step, and extended the hose to him. He snatched it out of her hand, fumbled with the valve one-handed, and, unable to flick it on and hold the shotgun at the same time, dropped his weapon.

He didn’t even get a drop before Crook hurled into him at full speed, sending them both sprawling into the sand. “Get the gun!” she shrieked at the others, who scrambled for it. The unconscious Storm Boy on the other end of his chain jerked around like a dead animal. “The gun!”

Braith scrambled to snatch up the shotgun and get it to Crook while Pearl and Hang yanked on the chain, screaming in terror as the man whirled on them, snarling. Crook aimed the shotgun and got her finger on the trigger: nobody scared  _ her _ friends.

_ Click. _ The gun misfired. She raised it and used it as a club instead, bringing it down hard on his shoulder, and the man cringed away, raising his hands to defend his face and vitals as she advanced, her blood up. “Who’re you?” she screamed, swinging the gun over her shoulder, ready to strike again. “What d’you want? We’re not going back!”

He collapsed, hands trembling. “Back,” he echoed, hoarse and dry. “Citadel. No.  _ No.  _ Me either.”

Behind her, the Storm Boy roused and straggled to his feet. “Well done, Bloodbag!” he crowed, drunkenly rising up. “We got ‘em! All of ‘em!”

“No!” shouted Pearl, and kicked him, knocking him back to his seat in the sand. “We’re not going back! We’re going to the Green Place!”

“Green Place?” The Storm Boy snorted. “That’s crazy talk. You won’t last on your own out here. The Immortan’s coming down behind. All the drivers you can imagine. Oh, what a  _ day _ it’ll be when I hand you all back. I can ask for anything I want to. I think I’ll ask to drive a Rig. Bloodbag, what’ll you ask for?”

The other man was still kneeling in front of Crook, his eyes wild and searching. “Bolt cutters,” he said, sounding strained, and yanked at the chain attached to his muzzle. 

“You could ask for a lot more than bolt cutters,” continued the Storm Boy, oblivious.

“Hand me them,” said Crook, reaching her hand behind her and not taking her eyes off the man. He wasn’t a threat at all: he was just scared, and probably starving. She knew the look of someone starved. “Now.” The Gink inched up behind her and put them into her hand. The metal felt warm and rough, and Crook brought them around front. “Hold out the chain,” she said, and the man did so, his eyes fixed on her and his fingers and arm shaking, as if it was too much effort to hold for a long time. Crook raised them up and got the shears positioned as well as she could without cutting the tube, then wrestled with the handles, squeezing as hard as she could until there was a  _ snap  _ and the chain fell away, cleanly separated. 

The man backed up a step and wrestled with the chain and tubing, tugging the needle out of his chest with a grunt and looking over at the Storm Boy, who still sat there like an idiot, gaping. “Needle,” he said, and Pearl, who understood instantly, crouched over the Boy and wrenched off the wrist cuff and removed the needle, unthreading the intact tube from the chain and handing it over to the man. “And that’s  _ my _ boot,” he growled, pointing at the Storm Boy’s left foot before making a dash for him and wrestling it off. The effort seemed to drain him, and he slumped back. 

“But you’ve all got to come with me,” said the Storm Boy, still not grasping the situation. He looked up at them all: five women, one armed with bolt cutters and another wielding a shotgun as a club, all glaring at him, and one half-crazy man, and re-assessed. “I—I got to go back, then. And tell ‘em. You—”

Crook handed the bolt cutters to Braith and punched him in the nose. It sent him tumbling back unconscious, deadweight in the dirt. “Scrap him,” she said, turning to the rest. “I— hey!”

The feral man was stumbling to the Rig on long legs too weak to work properly, dragging himself up to the cab. “Get him!” cried the Gink. “He’s going to steal it!”

“Stop!” shouted Braith, tugging on his filthy pants. “Hey,  _ stop!” _

He fell backward, sprawling into the dirt, gasping for air: the effort had exhausted him. “Running,” he panted, eyes wildly staring at them all. He didn’t look like he could see them: maybe he was fainting. “Have to— go. Get away.”

“That’s what we’re trying to do,” said Pearl. “Crook, can he— could he come? To the Green Place with us?”

“We should leave him,” said Braith uncertainly, looking down. “He’s dying. He’d just slow us down.”

“Do you know how to drive this thing right?” Crook demanded, leaning over the man. Her breast pain, which had taken a backseat to the events that had been unfolding, had returned with a vengeance, and it was making her mean and cross. “Say yes or no. Quickly.”

“I can drive anything.” His voice was weak and frail, but his eyes, a clear browny-gold-green in the bright sunlight, were anything but. “Just. Water. Please. Food.”

“We can’t feed you food, you’d be sick, and besides, we didn’t bring any. Get up.” She hauled him to his feet and he leaned on her, heavy despite his starved-down frame. “Braith and Pearl, get him into the cab.”

“Water?” asked Hang, frozen in her step as Braith climbed up to help him from the top and Pearl pushed from the bottom. 

Crook shook her head, trying to ignore the agony stabbing through her tits. “No. Mother’s milk. Better for him.”

“But we don’t have—Crook, you’re not gonna  _ feed _ him,” said the Gink, eyes wide. 

Her patience was wearing thin. “Do  _ you _ see a suckling pump anywhere? Hurry up and get him into the back. Gink, you sit passenger. Pearl, I know you can drive her slowly, so you do that. Stick to the hard earth. And Braith, you can sit in the rear, up in the Shell with Hang. Make sure we ain’t being followed.” She climbed up, gathering the dropped tools and stowing the hose back, and reached up to the cab, hand over hand as the engines roared to life and the Rig began to move slowly, slowly away.

* * *

The back of the cab was hot and close, and the Man reeked of dried piss, vomit, and filth. Crook sat on the wide floor, the engines humming, and cracked a window for fresh air before she started unwrapping her chest, biting her mouth against the sensitivity as the air touched her damp, tingling nipples. “I’ll get that muzzle off you,” she said, digging through the toolbag. “Here. All right. File. That’ll take ages, but—”

“Bolt cutters,” he grunted, half-supporting himself on one arm, too weak to sit up. 

“Right. Hold on.” Crook grabbed them from the floor and wedged one handlebar between her thighs using both hands for the other. “Turn round for me.”

He gave her a look like a caged animal. “I’ll do it,” he said.

“I’m not gonna take your ear off. Just turn.”

The Man snatched them from her hands with a low growl and tried to use them, but he was too weak to even raise them up, the adrenaline that had fueled his body earlier drained up like guzzoline fumes. “ _ Fuck _ ,” he spat, and Crook took them back. She didn’t understand the word, but she could see the terror in his eyes, and made herself as small as possible: she knew something of what it was like to be afraid and mistrustful. 

“Turn just a little. Yeah? Look— look out the window. At the sand. Pretend… pretend it’s green. Grass. All the grass you can imagine, far as you can see.”

His throat, streaked in sweat-dried dirt, bobbed as he swallowed, but he turned, eyes fixed far away. Crook wedged the lock at the back of his head between the cutters and brought it down hard, the metal cleaving with a sharp  _ snap _ . The Man jumped, shielding his face for a moment as he breathed, then reached up and yanked the whole thing free of his face. 

Crook looked at him. Long, grim face, too-big nose, cheeks imprinted with the shape of the muzzle and streaked in dirt and sweat: speckled with moles, sullen mouth, thick lips as dry as bone. She didn’t know what to think of him at all, and yet something about his face stirred her memory: had she met this man before? “Lay down here,” she said, patting the seat. “Face me.”

He rubbed his hands over his face and lowered himself down, his lips parting as he stared at her left tit. Crook felt a stab of worry: maybe he’d never had mother’s milk before. “It tastes good,” she assured him. “Just—”

The Man’s mouth closed over her breast, his dry lips engulfing her nipple, and his tongue curled around her teat. He sucked. Relief coursed through her body, relief so great she almost cried, almost went boneless on him: the pain was being all pulled away. The Man’s reaction was similar, except he groaned through his nose and reached up for her, gripping her by the back of the neck and holding her firm and still as he drank and drank. 

The Gink turned around in her seat. Crook heard the fabric of her filmy dress rustling. “He looks like he might suck you into a shell,” she said dryly. 

“Shut up,” said Crook, glaring at the Gink. She didn’t know what to do with her hands: you were supposed to cradle a baby or a doll, but he was far too large for that. Deciding to rest them somewhere, she gently cupped the back of his dust-caked head. 

The Man flinched away with an audible whimper, her teat popping from his mouth and dribbling milk as he cowered. “Don’t,” he rasped, his mouth wet.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, pulling her hands back. “Okay. I won’t. I just wanted to put my hands down, yeah?” He had pressed himself into the back of the seat, staring at her with fear in his eyes, and she shook her head, wondering how to draw him back. “Come on.” She cupped her breasts, one still aching fiercely. His eyes snapped to them like magnets, drawn by the promise of milk. “I won’t touch you again, promise.”

Hunger won out. He dragged himself forward like it hurt him and sucked her breast back into his mouth, his breath hot on her skin. Crook made herself keep her hands at her sides, away from him, until he’d drained both her tits as empty as he could and sank back into the seat, slightly cross-eyed. “Good,” he said, his voice less dry.

She re-wrapped her chest, glad of the relief. “I’ll be full again in another couple of hours. Help me sort the ammunition.”

“We haven’t even told him our names,” said Pearl from the front. “I’m Pearl. My sister’s Hang the Knowing, but she went to the back with Braith already.”

“I’m the Gink,” said Gink from the passenger seat where she was looking out past the sand flats. 

Crook looked down at the Man. He was eyeing them all up like he expected them to kill him. “And I’m Crook,” she said quietly as his eyes snapped back to her. There was a bloodstain on his shirt, seeping slowly. “You’re bleeding, there.” She pointed.

He looked down like his body didn’t belong to him and touched the blood with dirty fingers. “Huh,” he grunted. 

“Take off your shirt. I’ll patch you up.” She grabbed for the only supplies Phasma had kept on board: an ancient metal box with a handle and clasps, inside which were only a few rolls of bandages and a glass jar of precious disinfectant, old and yellowed. He tugged his shirt off over his head, exposing a body as sunlessly pale as the night moon, scarred and bruised, with a bloody, torn hole where the needle had entered his skin. As he twisted aside, she saw the newly-tattooed ink on his back, the red and raised swelling around the lines. “That looks painful,” she told him, and he stared at her like he didn’t know what she was talking about. 

Crook could read, having learned at the hand of Miss Loanie, so she read the words silently in her head. REN. KEEP MUZZLED: FERAL. What was _ Ren _ ? And was he really feral, like a dog? Would he kill them? Should she have taken the muzzle off? A chill ran down her spine as she bathed his wound in the disinfectant and he choked off a snarl of pain in his throat. He snatched the bandage from her hands and patched himself up, his chest expanding and contacting as he panted. “Is your name… Ren?” she tried, peering at the tattoo, and he flinched, then gave her a baleful look. “Well, I’m not going to call you ‘Feral’. Unless you want me to.”

“Don’t have a name,” he rasped, tearing off the bandage with his teeth and tying it down before dragging his shirt back over his head. “Don’t care what you call me.”

“I’ll call him Stinky,” said Gink, wrinkling her nose. 

“You give out names more than the Immortan,” Crook snapped. 

“Crook, I see a canyon up here. No way but right through. Where should I go?” Pearl sounded unsure, and Crook clambered over the seats to look. 

“I don’t know,” she said, frowning. Miss Loanie had never talked about a canyon. Were they going the right way?

The Feral swung his body forward, startling her. “No. Not through there,” he said shortly, jabbing a thick finger toward the right. “Head that way. Less chance of ambush.”

“Ambush?” asked the Gink.

He nodded. “That canyon’s watched. Head slightly south. There’s open road and rocky land. No tracks.”

Crook frowned. “But if we’re in the open, they’ll see us.”

A low grunt left his lips. “They’re klicks and klicks back. You can drive. Head south. I’ll inventory the ammunition. You help me.” He indicated Pearl.

“Okay.” Pearl climbed out of the seat and Crook climbed in, adjusting the switches and easing more power to both engines as the Rig picked up speed and began to hurtle along the deserted ground. 

* * *

Pearl sat with the Feral, counting out bullets in the back seat. Unseed, that was what Miss Loanie had called them, because you planted them in a body and watched it die. Miss Loanie had known a lot about organics, about how they worked: she’d been something like an Organic Mechanic at one point, long ago, maybe a hundred years ago. She helped them with their monthly cycles and made sure they were healthy, and helpfully looked the other way whenever Imperator Dameron or Imperator Finn came to visit the Wives. 

She shut her eyes as she counted out more bullets and thought about Finn.  _ Ending, _ his name meant, the name he’d been given when he’d come to the Citadel. The ending of his old life, the start of a new one. Pearl liked him: his dark, smooth face that smiled easily for them, the white paint that coated him from eyes to scalp to give the same contrast that black grease did on light skin, his endless stories. 

_ He’d wanted us to be free.  _ He and Dameron both, exchanging looks in the lamplight when the Wives whispered about their troubles. Free: what a terrifying word that was. Pearl and Hang had been brought to the Citadel at the ages of three and five, and she couldn’t remember any other life than being coddled away, used for breeding once they’d been old enough— which hadn’t been as early as the Immortan would have wanted, thanks to Miss Loanie, who yammered down a storm about the possibility of perfectly healthy fourteen-year-olds dying in childbirth due to too-narrow hips.

Unbidden, a memory rose to mind: Hang very close and whispering  _ remember your real name, so you don’t forget, don’t forget... _

Usually, the things inside didn’t catch, and if you were far enough along it was the sucking pumps for you until you were all thin and drained dry. The fact that the Gink had made it this far was astonishing, and proof, in Pearl’s mind, that the father couldn’t possibly be the Immortan.  _ His seed’s as rotten and dead as the dirt out here. Crook is right.  _ Pearl vaguely remembered another Wife from long ago, someone older, motherly, with curly hair and a kind face, being banished from the Citadel for her failures: her baby had come out without any brain at all, an awful little thing. They’d taken it away and nobody’d ever clapped eyes on it again.

She wondered who the Feral was. Maybe a loner in the Wasteland, gone crazy from no water or food. Those didn’t last long. Pearl knew, because she’d seen dozens pass through the Citadel from her favorite window out on the valley. They were all used as bloodbags, their parts scavenged down to the bones after death.  _ Your shin might be useful as a gearshift. Your guts for strings. The Organic Mechanic has a use for everything.  _ Crook had loathed that: hated the idea of someone using her parts. But Crook had always been stubborn: never fit into the shape everyone wanted her to be. That was why she was Crook. Pearl was surprised she’d even let the Feral Man take her milk. It must have been aching something awful for her to do that.

“Thirty-eight,” the Feral said, breaking her silence as he pointed to a neat pile of bullets. “Twenty-one loose and one belt of two-hundred fifty, thirty caliber.” His thick, dirty finger pointed to another. “Eighty-three. One hundred-fourteen. Shotguns, the M-1919 mounted on the back, Colt revolver, Beretta 911. I’ll bag them and write the gun on the bag so we know.”

“You can write?” asked Pearl, fascinated as she watched him fiddle with a stylus and ink-jar, carefully marking out the makes of the guns on the canvas bags he’d put the bullets into. “Where’d you learn?”

“My mother,” he said shortly. His handwriting was readable, scratchy, a little awkward and thin, but as he worked steadily, his hand grew stronger.

Pearl was fascinated. He’d had a mother. He remembered her. “Where is she? Your mother?”

He grunted and finished writing  _ Beretta 911 _ on the last bag. “Gone.”


	4. Chapter 4

Nobody had followed them, seemingly. They pulled to a halt under a singular outcropping of rock to wash the dust caked on the rims of the tires away, which soon turned into an impromptu bath in the empty space between the Rig and the rock. The Feral stood by the cab, eyeing them and the flat, empty landscape warily as they stripped and scrubbed clean of dirt and sweat, spluttering in the cool water from the tanks.

“Don’t waste it,” he said shortly, looking up.

“We can’t waste it. There’s a hundred thousand gallons. You couldn’t waste it if you left the hose on all night.” The Gink extended her hand. “Come here, Stinky. You need a bath, too.”

He drew back. “No.”

“I am  _ not _ riding in a cab with you if you smell like piss tomorrow,” she said archly, wiping down her wet arms. 

“Oh, scrap you,” said Crook, drawing herself up from where she’d been crouching in the sand. “Just because  _ you’ve _ been spoiled soft doesn’t mean everyone else is used to it.”

“I’m not spoiled,” said Gink sourly. 

“Good. You can stand watch while we help him wash,” said Hang, a smile flickering at the corners of her mouth. “Unless you want us to tie you to the roof so he can ride in the cab.”

The Gink spluttered and stomped over to the rear of the tank as she got her clothes back on, and Hang thumbed the nozzle of the hose. The Feral took a step, eyes fixed on the water as it gushed out to the ground. “It won’t bite,” Braith said encouragingly. “Come on.”

Another step, and another, and he had taken off his boots, leaving them upright and open. Two more, and he was shedding his shirt, then fumbling with his pants, shooting furtive looks at the flowing water. Braith stepped over, carefully helping him unlatch the closures and tug them down, then knelt to tug them off his legs as he wobbled on one foot, then the other. And there he was, most of his skin pale as a lizard’s belly, streaked with filth, stained with things none of them wanted to give a name to. 

Crook walked over, feeling strangely uneasy about her nakedness for the first time in a long time. “I’ll wet you down and wash you,” she said firmly, extending her hand. “Come on.”

He wavered a moment, then lifted his hand, letting two of his thick fingers rest on her palm. Crook tugged him by his fingers over to the hose, took it from Hang, and drenched him, making him gasp and shiver and open his mouth for water as Braith sidled up with a rag. “I’ll let you do his back,” she said, starting to scrub down his left arm. “Looks painful.”

“They didn’t bother cleaning their needles, most like. That Mechanic don’t care, ‘cause all the bags die so quick.” Crook dug through her box and found the disinfectant. “Right. Brace yourself, yeah?”

The Feral turned and braced his hands on the tank, then nodded sharply. Crook doused a clean rag and wiped it over the still-fresh lines, and he shuddered, groaning through his nose and twisting— but he didn’t bolt, which was good. She finished cleaning him and let Braith and Hang work on the rest of his body as Pearl helped her untie her hair and wash it clean. 

The Immortan liked their hair. He called it  _ glory, _ which meant something very pretty, and liked it best when it was loose and flowing: never let them tie it back when he came to see them. Crook took a few scraps of leather thong and tied her hair back from scalp to nape in a couple of knots: the better for keeping it out of her face. “Want me to do yours?” she asked Pearl.

“It’s got to come out of my face,” said Pearl, blowing a hank of black hair away from her nose. “Do you have those scissors in the medicine kit?”

“Yeah. Here.” Crook handed her the scissors, and Pearl tugged her front hair away, chopping through it and cutting it short above her eyes, then tying the rest of it back into a tail with a scrap of cord. “Looks nice,” she told her.

Pearl cut another stray piece short. “Thanks. Hang, I can do yours?” she called to her sister, who was studiously scrubbing away at the Feral’s left leg. He was badly bruised there, and his face kept twitching, but he didn’t say a word. 

“I’ll just braid it.” Hang tucked a stray wet lock behind her ear. 

“Look at that,” Braith said, smiling at the Feral. “You’re a man under all that dirt after all.”

He shied away, red-faced as she touched his belly, flat and lean. “Are we sure?” said Hang, tilting her head. “Look at all that hair. Could be a bear, like the ones Miss Loanie told us about.”

“He does do an awful lot of growling,” Braith mused, tilting her head to one side. The Feral glanced at them and must have realized they meant no harm, because his shoulders relaxed and he bared his teeth with a soft  _ grrrr _ . 

Hang pretended to jump. “Oh, no! Quick, Braith, find him some honey. Maybe he won’t eat us up alive.”

“You’re being silly. Bears aren’t real.” Crook walked over and eyed him up. He looked much better cleaned up, but his clothes were a stinking, sodden mess. “We can’t dress you back in those. Did Phasma have any extra things? Might be they’d fit him.”

“I’ll look,” said Hang, turning and climbing back up into the cab. The Feral let Braith scrub the last bit of dried sweat and filth from his body, then held his arms out, letting himself air-dry in the hot wind. 

“I’m hungry,” he mumbled without looking at Crook, his large ears turning red.

_ But he just ate two hours back!  _ Scrap it. If babies were half this demanding, Crook was almost glad she didn’t have one. “I’ll feed you after we get back in the cab. Shame we don’t have any in the tank.”

“No, just in  _ your _ tanks,” teased Braith, tugging her clothes back on and braiding her hair up into a pair of knots. “Didn’t the Immortan always say it was best from the source?”

“How would he know?” Crook shot back. “He always had it from the sucking tanks. Him and his Imperators.”

“That’s true. Well, back up. Where do we head?”

Crook hauled herself up, tugging the Feral along with her as Braith stowed the hose. “Miss Loanie said east, past the road. On the map, she showed us a pass through cliffs, a little bit south of the Painted Valley.”

“All the passes are watched,” said the Feral, shaking his head. “Too dangerous.”

“We can’t go around,” Crook told him, unwinding her breasts and sighing inwardly at the tight, aching feeling. She must have adjusted to his eating, like she used to on the pumps. From four hours between expressing to only two hurt a lot. “You need some solid food, and so do we. There’s a Road Trader outpost marked on the map. Just here.” She pulled a cloth from a bag and showed him where she’d copied the marks on Miss Loanie’s. “See? That dot. There’s a settlement out where there used to be a— an oh-hey— I don’t remember the word.”

“Oasis,” said the Feral, sliding to the floorboards to position himself between her knees for better access to her chest as Hang pulled a pair of worn canvas trousers from a compartment. “Mm. What do we have to trade?”

“We can trade a gun with its bullets,” said the Gink, sitting next to Crook and holding onto her belly like her life depended on it. “Or you, Stinky. Might be they’d like a good healthy bloodbag.”

“Maybe we’ll trade  _ you _ ,” said Crook, shooting the Gink a glare as the Feral leaned forward and latched on, sucking hard. “Ow. Not so rough.”

“Oh, I can’t stand watching you,” grumbled the Gink, crossing her arms over her own breasts. “Makes me tingle.”

“We might could pump you for mother’s milk to trade, Crook,” said Hang, gnawing on her lip. “It’s like gold out here, so far from the Citadel.”

“If it gets us food and supplies, then I’ll do it,” muttered Crook as the Feral switched sides. “We’ll try the gun first and barter for food.”  _ Should have just brought food, _ she thought in dismay. It hadn’t seemed like such a long journey on the map. Fresh fruit and veg would have been even more valuable than mother’s milk. Her belly growled. Milking was hungry work. It seemed unfair that the Feral was the only one getting enough in his belly. People could live weeks without food, as long as they had water. She knew that from intimate experience. 

The Feral retreated. “Hungry,” he muttered, eyeing her belly up. He must have heard the rumbling. “Shouldn’t drain you dry. Make it worse.”

Crook re-wrapped her chest. “Thanks,” she said, avoiding his eyes. 

“It’s not… fun. Being used for your fluids.” He tapped the bandage on his chest ruefully, slipping away from her. “Hm.”

“No, it ain’t,” she agreed, tying off the knot. “Or being used for your bellies. I guess maybe the other Imperators are being used, too, but for some other kind of stuff, huh? Like stud animals. It’s a disgrace. That’s what Miss Loanie always said.”

“They... hurt you?” he asked, eyes narrowing as he looked between her and Pearl.

Pearl leaned back, looking tired. “Not really. Nobody— nobody’s supposed to use us like that except the Immortan, but he looks the other way. Sometimes. Sometimes he makes ‘em do it. Probably ‘cause he knows he can’t get babies any other way.”

“Mm,” grunted the Feral. “No babies?” He indicated her stomach, and Pearl shook her head, seeming to deflate a little. 

“No. I had one, but he’s gone now.” 

“He was a pretty baby,” said Crook defensively. “Looked just like Finn, didn’t he? With your eyes. Who cared if he didn’t look like the Immortan?”

“The Immortan cared,” said Pearl, sounding brittle. “And then I got a year with the Milking Mothers. My tits were about to fall off, they bled so bad.”

“Five of you. Hm,” said the Feral, tilting his head. “I see why he wants you back.”

“We’re not going back. We’re not just breeders. We’re not  _ things _ .” Hang had fire in her eyes. “And if you try and double-cross us—”

“Won’t,” grunted the Feral. “I’ll drive for now. I know the way.”

* * *

At sunset, the Feral guided the Rig into a low, flat valley, marked by rocky outcroppings and the beginnings of mountains. Crook stirred from the back, yawning, and sat up. There appeared to be nobody for a hundred klicks. “Where’s the trading outpost?” she asked, which woke up the Gink and Hang. Braith and Pearl were still sleeping on each other. 

He shook his head in response and parked, flipping the switches. “Wait here.”

“But—”

The door opened and his head disappeared, slipping out and down. She scrambled to the front seat and watched him walk ahead in his borrowed canvas pants and boots and nothing else. Her breasts ached again, and she silently cursed her body and its terrible timing. 

Ten yards ahead, he stopped, tilted his head back, and let out shout in some language she didn’t understand, his voice rising and falling in a sing-song intonation.

Silence fell. Then, an answer, high and plaintive from the cliffs, the same falling, rising cry in a strange language. 

“Pearl! Braith!” She shook them, rousing them to wake, and the five women watched in shock as the dim cliffs sprang to life, torches busting to flame, engines revving, people on bikes skidding out from nowhere and looking down. The Feral raised his right hand and waved in a circular motion, then clutched it to his heart, and someone high up must have returned it, because they descended and met him, helmeted leather to bare skin and canvas. 

“Do you think it’s safe?” asked the Gink, staring wildly.

The Feral turned and waved at them, beckoning. Crook swallowed. “Yes. He’s signaling. Come on. Bring the gun.”

The women slid out, Braith holding the empty Beretta and Crook tugging the ammunition for it in the marked bag. The bikers dismounted and watched, drawing close in the torchlight as they stumbled to the Feral’s side.

“They look like beetles or something,” whispered Hang, sticking close to her sister. The Gink kept a hand glued to her belly, eyeing them all at every turn. “Are they even people?”

“Shh. They can hear you,” Crook hissed. 

“You’ve got  _ breeders _ ,” said one, removing his helmet and staring at them all with frank shock. “Ripe ones, too. Look at that belly.”

“The women aren’t for barter. This is.” The Feral took the sack and the Beretta and set them on the ground. “We need food.”

“That one’s producing  _ milk _ ,” said another one in a voice of astonishment, and everyone turned to look at Crook, who brought her arms up too late, fighting the urge to run back to the safety of the Rig. She hadn’t been around this many men at once in a long time. “Where did you find these treasures?”

The Feral crossed his arms. “All over. Here and there.”

“That ink on your back says to me you were stuck in Snoke’s territory,” said the leader, a man in grease-paint from chin to forehead, red lines marked on his face and a tattered cloth that looked as if it might have been striped long ago wrapped around his head. “You stole ‘em, didn’t you?”

“We stole  _ him, _ ” said Hang fiercely, which got a laugh from the bikers. 

“Stole him, did you? Needed blood? Or something else?” The leader eyed up the Feral’s back. “Says there he’s got intact tackle. Whose baby’s in that belly?” He pointed at the Gink, who shrank back and shielded herself as Braith clung to her. 

“Not his,” said Crook, finding her voice. “We just want passage and food. Will you take the gun or not?”

The leader stepped towards her, his face gleaming in the firelight. “It’s a good piece, and no mistake. But you’ve got milk to spare and share, don’t you? And water. Guzzoline, too, or else I don’t know what’s in that War Rig.”

Crook wanted to spit at him. Feeding the Feral had been  _ her _ choice— a choice to save a man on the brink of starving. But if it could save her four sisters, too… “I don’t have a sucking pump.”

“We have one,” said a woman’s voice, cracked and old, and Crook turned in surprise to see an elderly woman in leather and rags and a blanket come forward, pulling her dust-goggles off her face and showing two kindly light eyes, wreathed in wrinkles. There’d never been a woman older than Miss Loanie in all of Crook’s life. This one must be a million years old. “Below. If you can give us… forty, my girl, along with the gun and enough water to share, I think we’ll let you pass and give you all the food you need.”

Crook saw floating stars, sweeping in lazily and blurring her vision. “I been… making it all day, with no food,” she said faintly, and Pearl caught her as she fell to one knee. 

“Get them up,” said a voice, and she felt arms lifting her, supporting her, her feet off the ground, her head against something hard as her vision went dark.


	5. Chapter 5

Nothing good can last, thought the Feral, sitting by Crook's pallet and shoveling food into his mouth as fast as he dared. The other women sat by the fire, illuminated in warm yellow and orange light, as the Thunderers cooked and spoke and washed the ancient, dusty sucking pump, ready for when Crook was. 

The food was delicious: they had hydroponic farms here under the earth, doused in rigged-up lights and using precious water from dew collecting, grown in soil taken from somewhere secret they wouldn’t name. They even had a large store of dry food, food in metal cans from long ago that had a shelf-life of ages and ages, food in bags and food in plastic sucked-tight containers that only needed a little water to re-hydrate. He bolted down a mouthful of cooked grain and canned vegetables, reminding himself constantly to stop and chew before he got sick. 

Pearl kept bringing him water. He sipped it slowly, nodding at her as she left and went back to the fire. Auntity, the old woman, was tending to Crook, a cold wet cloth on her head. “Poor girl,” she muttered, checking her wrists and throat. The Feral didn’t much care for the manhandling, and considered briefly shoving her aside, but thought better of it. “No food. All that milk. Who’s she been feeding, then, with no pump? Or has she been watering the poor dead ground with it?”

“Me,” he grunted. Auntity blinked for a moment, looking at him, then nodded. 

“Mm. Seen stranger things on the Road come through. A girl feeding a starving feral from her breast like a babe is a new thing, though. How much did you take off her?”

He didn’t like that wording. “Gave. She gave me. I didn’t take.”

Auntity waved a hand dismissively. “Take, give, all the same, just from two different sides. How much?”

“Maybe… ten ounces. I don’t know. Hard to count.”

“Each feeding, or in all?”

“Each feeding. Every two hours, I think.”

“Scrap, but you’re a hungry one.” Auntity stroked Crook’s hair back from her forehead. “She’ll take on a fever if she keeps up like this. Body can’t keep it up without enough extra food, you see. Waste off to nothing before you get to wherever you’re going.”

“Green Place,” he said. “They said so.”

A flicker passed through Auntity’s eyes. “That so?”

“You know it?”

“Heard of it. Morgan-story, is what it is. You wander out here long enough, you see pools of water where there ain’t none, castles and clouds. Way off where.”

The Feral shook his head tightly. “Not going back.”

Auntity chuckled. “No, I don’t ‘spect you want to. Heard they chew up and spit out poor souls like you in the Citadel. But someone like you, with these fine girls… I’m sure that’s a tale to tell.”

“It was an accident.” He gulped down the last of his water. “The Citadel’s going to be coming for us.”

She shook her head. “Not if you get into safe territory. Out past the Dry River, over the Spine Ridge.”

The Feral frowned. “That’s north. We’re going to the Green Place. We have to go east.” 

“You’re going somewhere, and no mistake,” she muttered. “Oh, there’s your girl.” Crook’s eyes were open, blinking, searching. The Feral bent over to look at her closely, reluctant to touch her. “All right, then? We have food for you.”

“Food,” said Crook, and coughed. “Yeah.”

“I’ll get it,” said the Feral, and went to the pots, putting some of everything on a battered metal tray and bringing it back to Crook. He could feel the other women’s eyes on him, and he didn’t care. She was sitting up and eating, and he was content to sit with his back to solid rock at her side. 

There was something familiar about her. He looked her over and catalogued her every feature: sunburned cheeks and pointed, freckled nose, eyes he’d first thought to be brown but were lighter than that, wide mouth, chapped lips, circles of exhaustion under her eyes, tangled, dusty brown hair. No, maybe he didn’t know her. Maybe he’d mistaken her for someone else. He shook off the ghost of a faint memory and leaned his head back, trying to keep his guts from churning up all the food he’d eaten. 

Crook gulped down the food and water, looking at Auntity strangely. “You a History Woman?” she asked. 

“D’you see any ink on me?” said Auntity, half-smiling. “Not to grind on ink, ‘course. Your friend there, the pregnant one—”

“The Gink,” said Crook.

“Gink, then— she’s got a fine piece there.” The three black diamonds on the Gink’s left shoulder gleamed in the light from the fire. “Thought the Immortan didn’t like his women inked.”

“She came like that,” Crook explained, setting the cup and tray down. “She was older when she came.”

“Mm. How old were you all?”

Crook shifted. “Hang and Pearl were… little. I think three or four. The Gink says she came when she was twelve. Braith was my age when I got there, I think, and I was… I dunno how old I was. Old enough to remember some. Not all.” She sighed. “Just a man, some Imperator with black paint all over, taking me. The Immortan’ll send out Imperators— Snatchers, we call ‘em— to go look for new ones when the old ones run dry. I must have replaced someone.”

The Feral was quiet, his eyes half-closed. Quiet as Crook reached for the pump, quiet as she got it fitted, quiet as she used her hands to operate the mechanism, as milk began to flow into the waiting glass bottles. 

“You don’t know your own age?” asked Auntity.

“No. I— we count our cycles. In the Citadel.” Crooks eyes fluttered shut. “I’m pumping, so I ain’t having ‘em now, but I’ve had forty-seven. Maybe got another sixty or seventy in me, Miss Loanie said, before I dry up and get tossed and some kid replaces me. And I didn’t want that for me. Or anyone.”

“Nor should you,” said Auntity. “You rest, now. We’ll get you what you need for the milk and water. And the gun with its unseed.”

“Unseed,” said Crook. “Miss Loanie called them that, too. Said you stuck one in a living thing and watched it die.”

“Maybe I knew your Miss Loanie once,” said Auntity, smiling. “Rest, girl. Long road ahead.”

* * *

Bolstered up by food and water and rest, Crook capped off at fifty-eight ounces over twelve hours, and proudly presented the full bottles to the leader, whose name was Redfinger, before being given a blanket and shuffled off to something called a  _ bath room _ . That turned out to be an underground spring where the water was too sulfurous to drink, but was good for the body, and the Feral stood guard as Crook slipped her clothes and slid in, soaking as deep as she could. Auntity brought her fresh clothes. 

“That water’ll help you dry up,” she told Crook, leaving a sliver of soap and an ancient comb by the thin linen towel, holey and patched. “You can’t be milking and on the run. Someone’ll nab you faster than spitting.”

“Thanks,” said Crook, working the tangles out of her hair. “Miss Loanie used to tell us only pump a bit, not enough to empty you out. Makes it go away faster.”

“That’s right,” said Auntity. “And cold compresses. I’ll find you some.”

“You all been kind,” said Crook, averting her gaze. “Thanks.”

“Mm.” Auntity moved off, leaving them alone. The Feral sat down after a moment, knees up, watching the cave opening as Crook washed herself clean. 

_ Got to get safe. Safe. Stay away. Stay safe. Keep moving. _

“Feral,” said Crook, and he turned unconsciously, still lost in thought. “What if the Green Place ain’t real?”

He decided not to tell her about what Auntity had said. “As long as I get somewhere safe. Away from the Citadel’s reach.”

“You,” she echoed, a bitter tone in her voice. “Right. There’s you, and there’s us. So why ain’t you gone on your own way, then? Left us here?”

“You have the Rig,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

Crook’s eyes were hard and flinty. “Would you steal it, then? And leave us behind?”

He hesitated, unsure. The idea of being solely at the wheel of such a massive, powerful machine was tempting, but… he needed people to help him maintain it, didn’t he? And yet, the idea of abandoning the women to the Waste rankled on him in a different way, a way he didn’t understand. Something would be wrong without Pearl’s smile, Hang’s gentleness, Braith’s clever hands, even the Gink’s pithy comments and disdainful looks— and without Crook’s compassion, as rough-edged and reluctant as it was, he didn’t think he’d… feel... “No,” he said hoarsely, his voice echoing off the stone.

“Hm,” said Crook, and dipped below, coming up sleek and wet and blowing for air. 

The Feral frowned. “You look like a whale.”

“What’s a well?” She clambered up, clean and soaking, and toweled off.

He shook his head. “Whay-ul, whale. It’s an animal that used to live in the oceans. And it had… a nose on top of its head. When it came up to breathe the air it would blow like that.” He pursed his lips and illustrated. “ _ Phwoooo.” _

Crook shook her head, smiling a little for the first time, and the Feral felt something odd stir inside him. He wanted to see that smile again: it was wide and bright as the sky. “You’re a funny man,” she said, tugging on the sturdy trousers and shirt, the well-broken boots, the woven band to keep her hair back, the big gray cloth that draped her like a shroud. “If I’m a whale, what’s the Gink?”

The Feral considered. “Spider,” he finally said. 

“Oh, I know them. We have ‘em in the Citadel gardens. They spin silk and eat flies. And Braith?”

He followed her back to the other caves. “Rabbit.”

“What’s a rabbit?”

“I’ll tell you later.” He was tired, and his belly was growling again. “They said they’ll let us stay another night. We have to be on the move in the morning.”

“They have what they want. They’re kind to let us stay.” She turned on the threshold of the cave she shared with the others and gave him a look. “You go bathe. Ask for clothes. Auntity’ll find you something.”

“Mm,” he grunted, and moved away from the warm firelight and the soft whispers, back into the sandstone tunnels.

* * *

The Citadel found them on the second day after they’d left behind the Thunderers, bearing down hot with screams and pounding wheels in the flat wastes of the east. Their first hint was the distant smoke, and after slamming the Rig into high gear and accelerating, they realized they stood no chance, out here alone and visible.

The Feral sat in the driver’s seat, both hands white-knuckled and clenching the wheel. Dust ground into his teeth, his eyes: his clothes were borrowed and good, but his nerves were shot through, unraveling with every distant wail and yammering cry. 

_ Can’t go back, back, can’t go back. Survive. Survive. _

Crook snatched up the Colt and hung out of the window, firing wildly back at the advancing line of vehicles. “The Immortan’s on the road!” she screamed over the roaring engines. “Coming quick!”

Braith began to sob, trembling in the back seat. “We should go back, we should beg him, he’ll forgive us! I know he will!”

The Gink slapped her. “Don’t you lose your nerve!” she shouted. “We’re not going back! We’re not things, and this baby—” she grabbed her belly— “won’t be a warlord,  _ won’t _ be a tyrant! You hear me? Get a gun!”

The Rig was too slow, and the cars pulled up alongside: souped up, burned-out shells welded together on chariot wheels of rubber and metal. The Feral saw the familiar grill of a Ford Falcon, and anger filled him: that was  _ his car, _ rebuilt and driven by two Storm Boys— a flash of red, dusty hair, white-paint skin, a wild grin.  _ Hux.  _ He knew that face, and from the glint of a revolver in his hand, he knew he had been given a mission: the Immortan didn’t give guns to just anyone, let alone his own prized gold-chased Colt.

A cry from the back of the Rig caught his attention, and he glanced into the side mirror before it disappeared in a blast of broken glass: Pearl was alone in the rear cab with the mounted gun, and she was struggling.

“Crook!” he bellowed. “Get up here!”

The girl scrambled over the floor and changed seats, gripping the wheel, white-faced with terror, and the Feral crawled back over to the left-hand door, snatching up the knife. “Drive. I’m going to the Shell. Stay down and don’t get shot!”

“Don’t  _ you _ get shot,” retorted Hang, one of the sawed-off shotguns resting on the window frame. “I’ll cover you.”

He swung out into the blasting wind, and immediately felt the  _ ping _ of a shot reverberate through his hand as he braced himself on the metal body of the cab. Below him, Hux was screaming, half out of the window as another Storm Boy drove. “Bloodbag!” he bellowed. “Bloodbag! Ride with me! Glory and death! Valhalla!”

_ No thanks, _ thought the Feral, and climbed back up onto the body of the Rig, crawling on his hands and knees to the rear gunnery set where Pearl was on her knees, frantically trying to get the belt of ammunition reloaded. “It’s jammed!” she shouted.

“I got it. Get down. Cover your head.” Bullets were spraying everywhere, ricocheting off the tanks, and the Feral got the belt unjammed and locked it in place. “There. Fire.”

Pearl turned to him as she grasped the handles, and her eyes went wide. “Behind you!”

He turned. A glancing blow struck him on the face, and he went down, stunned, the world whirling in sparks.

_ Hello? Where are you? _

“Bloodbag! Get out of my way!” Hux raised the rifle for another blow, and he thought he saw a little girl for a moment, standing between him and the Storm Boy, hand raised. He lunged to shield her and rocketed into Hux, who went sprawling across the top of the tank, his rifle strap catching on a handle. “I’ll ride shiny and chrome! He said so!”

“Why?” barked the Feral, straddling Hux and grabbing him by his hair. “Tell me!”

“The Gink!” he howled. “His best treasure! The pregnant one! I’m to return her first, safe and whole. Let me go! I ride to glory! I—”

The Feral picked him up by the throat. It wasn’t hard, fueled by adrenaline as he was, and with a simple toss the Storm Boy was flying over the edge of the tank, his boots sailing through the air, left behind in an instant as the Rig screamed on. He picked the rifle up and stumbled back to the front, his knife left behind with Pearl.

“He wants the Gink,” he said as he slipped back into the cab, making Braith jump. “That Storm Boy said she’s his best treasure.”

“The Immortan can scrap himself,” said the Gink, white around the lips. “We aren’t going back. None of us.”

“ _ Gink!” _ bellowed a voice, and all four women in the cab stiffened, turning as if summoned. The Feral knew that voice. He’d heard it a thousand times before. “ _ Clever Crook! Hang the Knowing! Kindest Pearl! Freckled Braith! My treasures! Return to me!” _

“He’s close by,” said Braith, stirring to life as her sisters sat in shock. “Drive faster. Hurry—”

Something punched into the closed window of the cab, making Hang scream. A grappling hook, hanging on tight to the inside of the door, rattled as a Storm Boy Began to crawl up the line, hand over hand. Crook swung out and shot him dead with a bullet from the revolver, and he fell away, his partner in the vehicle below swerving back. 

“We can’t go back, we can’t,” she muttered, eyes wild. “Never again. Not things.”

“I’ll drive,” said Hang, scrambling back up to the cab as Crook went to the back. “You’re the better shot anyway.”

“We have to keep them off us,” said the Feral, looking at their frightened eyes and realizing they were looking for help, for answers. “As long as we can. We’ll move our course north.”

Gink looked surprised. “But that’s—”

“It’s away from where Snoke can get you,” he snapped. “Beyond the Spine Ridge. That isn’t his territory. It’s— where I was going. Before they caught me. But I’m not going back, either.”

“North, then,” said Hang, and checked the compass before adjusting the Rig. “And once he gives us up, maybe after that we can look for the Green Place. What’s— what’s past the Spine?”

“I don’t remember,” said the Feral after a moment. “Just keep driving.”

Hang checked the remaining mirror. “They’re still coming. And they’re fast. I can see the Bullet Farmers, too.” She looked down at her belly, at the slight curve that was beginning to poke out there. “He doesn’t know I’m pregnant.”

“And we’re not telling him,” said Crook fiercely. 

“No, I mean— I mean that if he finds out… I don’t know. I was thinking. What if I—remember when Testor got pregnant and lost it in the fifth month? He stopped everything to save it, to save her. Because nothing’s more important than a baby boy to him. So if I told him it was a boy, and then… and then I jumped out, maybe he’d stop. And let you all get away.” There were tears streaking down her dusty face. “Buy you some time.”

“That’s crazy talk. Don’t even think about that.” Crook grabbed her by the arm. “You’re not going anywhere.” Another spray of gunfire rattled the Rig.

“But he’s not going to stop until we’re past the Dry River,” said the Gink, understanding. “We have to do something.”

* * *

Pearl fired off a few more returning shots. The ammunition was low, and after that Storm Boy had gone tumbling off the side, all the attempts to board had been foiled by her sharp eyes and steady finger. She couldn’t help but pity them as they fell away into the red dust, little pale dead things like worms.  _ Just half-life boys, all dying for some man they worship.  _

She had caught a glimpse of Immortan Snoke at the wheel of his own Supremacy. The Supremacy, the black and chrome thing made of two fused cabs, four two-meter high wheels, a couple of screaming V-16s, and a mounted flamethrower, was a whispered legend: he only drove it when nothing else would do. On the road, hunting down treasures. At his sides she’d seen Imperator Finn and Imperator Dameron, both looking resolute and grim. Nobody could blame them— they’d likely been forced to come along, join the mad hunt to steal back the escaped Wives. Pearl hoped nobody had found out their part in it. 

Peering through the back cab was a mistake: he’d seen her, and he was only about twenty meters away. “Pearl!” he roared through the CB radio, hooked to a megaphone mounted on the cab. “Pearl! Your punishment will be severe if you  _ do not return _ !”

For answer, she fired off a shot that spiderweb-cracked his windshield, directly over where his pale face was, and ducked back down again, heart thudding with the bold defiance of her own actions.  _ He’s only a man. He can be killed.  _

_ But so can I. _

* * *

They were near to the foothills of where the Dry River stretched out, and the rocks were becoming jagged, narrow paths untraversed by any War Rigs yet. Hang, still driving, had to adjust her turns and slow down to avoid crashing, but the smaller and more agile cars of the Citadel had no problems avoiding it, and soon gained on them, surrounding them on both sides.

“Don’t let them get in front of the Rig,” directed the Feral, climbing up to the driver’s seat. “I’ll take it. I can—”

Hang left the driver’s seat and got to the back as the Feral slammed it into high gear, accelerating past craggy rocks and knocking a few over in his attempt to pick up speed. Crook, who was in the passenger seat, could see the wild, whooping faces of the white-painted Storm Boys, and bared her teeth at them as she fired with the shotgun.  _ Slangers.  _

The Feral drove like a maniac. They barely missed one rock formation, plowed into another, smashed a third to bits. The last rear mirror broke and tumbled away. “You’re going to get us killed!” wailed Braith, almost in tears from fear. 

“They’re readying harpoons for the tires,” Gink said softly, staring out the back. She exchanged a look with Hang, and before Crook could move, she’d swung out on the back door, arms flung wide as she hung low, protecting the front tires. 

“Hold!” screamed the Immortan, only meters away, through his megaphone system, and the Storm Boys obeyed, waiting to fire the harpoons. His voice had taken on a warning note, a voice like a furious storm: his eyes were narrow and hard and cold. “Gink!  _ Gink! That’s my property! That’s my child!” _

She raised herself up, eyes blazing. “He’s not yours!  _ He’s not yours and he never will be, you old man!” _

Hang joined her, hands cupped around her still-small belly. “I’ve got one, too!” she screamed over the wind, and watched the Immortan’s eyes switch over to her, taking in her body. “Hardly three months! You shoot us down, and I’ll jump!”

“ _ Hang! To defy me is to die!” _

“Then we’ll all die free!” she screamed, and Braith swung out between them, the rifle the Feral had plundered in her hands, lined up a shot, and fired. The shot burst through the weakened web of cracks Pearl had left and hit Imperator Canady, who was driving, right between the eyes. He slumped over, dead as a nail, as the Immortan scrambled for control of the car.

Gink turned, grinning at her sisters—

—and slipped, her bare foot finding no purchase on the smooth door. Braith screamed and grabbed her by the wrist, almost dropping the rifle, and Hang turned to help. Crook turned, pulling the shotgun out of the window, just in time to see Hang lose her grip on the window frame and disappear with a scream.

“Hang!” she screamed, horror overtaking her. “Hang!  _ No!” _

Behind them, a high, thin shriek of despair filled the air, and they realized that Pearl, who was still in the back, had seen it all. The Gink was in tears, frantic, almost throwing herself out the window as Braith dragged her back in. “No,  _ no, _ it should have been me!”

“Hang!” screamed Braith, sobbing. “Go back, turn it around, get her!”

The Feral was emotionless, a sullen-faced thing driving the Rig. “She went under the wheels,” he said. “We go forward.”

“No!” wailed the Gink, burying her face in her hands. “No!”

“Did you see her?” Crook asked numbly, staring at him. “See her die?”

The Feral swallowed and nodded his head. “She went under the wheels.”

* * *

Pearl climbed down as the Citadel convoy drew off and back. They could hear the Immortan’s howls of rage filling the air, his fury, his anger at losing yet another child. She was white in the face and got sick out the side of the cab before saying in a dull, colorless little voice, “I saw her fall. He ran her right over. Followed too close, couldn’t stop in time. She’s dead.”

Crook pulled her into an embrace, which the Feral regarded with some curiosity from the rear view mirror, and she said, “She ain’t dead, is she? Not if she’s with us, in here. In our heads. And you heard what she said. We’ll all die free.”

Pearl began to cry, big wet ugly sobs that shook her whole body from top to bottom, and Braith hugged her tight, too, and then the Gink from the other side, burying her face into her neck and weeping with her. It made the Feral feel something strange. He didn’t know what it was and he didn’t like it, so he turned around and kept driving. The sun was setting, and if they reached the Dry River in the night, they’d be over the Spine Ridge by the morning.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for mention of losing a child!

The sun had long since set, casting the landscape in shades of midnight blue and pale silver from the waning moon, when the tires of the War Rig began to skid and stick, groan and gutter and spin.  The Feral stopped the engines to listen. There was nothing but silence for miles. The women had all fallen into fitful sleep, layered on top of each other to keep out the cold desert air like the packed-down lines in the rock around them. 

The silence woke up Crook, who stirred and sat up. “Why’ve we stopped?” she asked, voice hoarse with sleep.

“Wheels are stuck,” he said tersely, opening the front door and slipping out. His boots sank into soft ground, mucky and sticky, and Crook peered out from above, her anxious face a pale blot in the dark. “Need a plank, or a piece of metal.”

“Stuck in what?” she asked, and slipped out, her own boots sinking into the mud. “Oh. Hm. I think we have spare parts in the back cab.”

“Are we stuck?” asked Pearl, half-awake and blinking as Braith and the Gink stirred. “We need that sheet metal for repairs? I can snatch it.”

“Be quick,” said the Feral, bending to scrape the wheels clear. “If we have four big ones, even better.”

* * *

Pearl climbed into the rear and down where they kept the big spare parts. The heavy sheets of metal were supposed to be used as needed, but they only had two, which would have to do. She set down her lamp and tugged on it.

Someone sniffled. She dropped the panel and whirled, startled, just in time to see someone huddled under the canvas bags up in the welded-on rear cab. “Who’s there?” she whispered. The only answer was another sniff, and a muffled sob.  She climbed back up and lifted the canvas bags, holding her lamp close to reveal a pale, white-painted face, sunken eyes, a red topknot of hair on a shaved head, and three black lines inked into his arm. He was crying, crying like a little child, his eyes red and wet. “You’re that Storm Boy,” she said, stunned. “What are you doing up here?”

“He saw me,” wept the Boy. “He said if I brought back the Wives I’d be exalted. And he saw me fail and fall. He called me a failure. I heard him. And I dropped his Colt.” He wore only a dusty pair of black pants, a belt, and a single boot: the other was missing.

“How did you get back on here? The Feral kicked you off.”

“I caught on. Hid. I was too ashamed to let go and fall. I’m a coward.” His nose was running, and he wiped it with the back of his arm. “I saw them take your sister. The other pretty one.”

Pearl felt a terrible stab of hope. “Hang? She ain’t dead?”

He shook his head. “No, she’s dead. He—he snatched her up and took her to the Mechanic and stopped it all, I saw. Saw them Imperators crying, too, so I guess it’s fine if I do it.” 

Grief crashed down again. She tried to hide it. “What’s your name?”

“Hux. Never had no other. And I’m… half-life. Sometimes I can feel it crackling in my lungs. It’ll get me soon. What’s yours?”

“I’m Pearl,” she said. “But I had another name, before. Only… only I think just Hang knew it, and now I’ll never know it again.”

“Oh.” He mulled that over, seemingly, for a moment. “Who’s the Feral?”

“The man, the one with us.” Pearl wiped her eyes.

Hux’s mouth quirked up. “Good name for him. Wish someone’d give me another name.” Tears dribbled out of his eyes, and Pearl couldn’t help but feel pity for this Storm Boy, who’d been taught nothing but the exaltation of death for the Immortan all his life— they didn’t have any History Women to tell them things had been different, once. 

“What’s those lines on your arm for?” she asked, pointing. They weren’t the carelessly done lines the Organic Mechanic had inked into the Feral’s back, but smooth and even, done slowly near his wrist.

He looked down. “Oh. They’re— that means I’ve had three years of victory on the Road. Could have been a right-hand to an Imperator, if I’d lasted longer.” He coughed, and some blood came up. A white hand wiped it away.

“You can come with us, then,” said Pearl. She could almost hear Hang in her ear:  _ to be kind when you can afford to isn’t weakness.  _

He shrank back. “Not with that feral Imperator on board. I’d rather jump off into the Waste.”

“Imperator?”

“Yeah. He didn’t tell you?”

A chill of horror snaked down Pearl’s back, a chill that had nothing to do with the cold night around her. “No. We just call him the Feral. He’s— he’s an Imperator?”

“One of the best, I heard,” said Hux, sitting up and brightening a little. He was pleased to have an audience for his tale. It seemed to get his mind off everything else. “He was the Immortan’s right hand. Brought him loads of treasures. Breeders, I mean. But one day he just went crazy. Took his Falcon and left the Citadel. Nobody knows why. Gone for ages. And then he turned up again like a ghost in the Waste.”

Pearl’s head swam and she sank down to her knees, her hands shaking. An Imperator. Not just an ordinary Imperator, either. A Snatcher, an Imperator who brought girls to the Citadel, to the Immortan—it wasn’t possible. She must be dreaming it. “No,” she whispered. “No, he… he’s helping. He can’t be…”

“What, a Snatcher?” Hux shook his head. “I’m telling you, he is. I heard he brought hundreds of breeders to the Immortan. If I’d ever done anything that shine, I’d have had five cars and a dozen Storm Boys myself. That’d be plus the three years, you know.” He tapped his arm. 

“Come on,” said Pearl, standing up suddenly and startling Hux. “You’re coming to the front with me. The more hands the better, and I need help getting this metal down. We’re stuck.”

* * *

Down on the mucky ground, Crook was clawing away at the mud that sucked at the tires when a dull  _ shunk _ met her ears. She looked up to see Pearl clambering down, following the sheet metal she’d pushed, and behind her was climbing—

“Storm Boy!” she snapped, and struggled to her feet, rushing him. “What are you—”

“Don’t hurt him!” Pearl said, catching at her wrists. “He didn’t know any better!”

“What—” began the Feral, wiping mud from his arms and freezing in his stride. “You—”

“He didn’t know, and that’s more’n you can say for yourself, isn’t it?” said Pearl, her eyes so dark and furious in the dim moonlight that they looked like two pits. 

Braith blinked. “Pearl, what are you talking about?”

“He’s an Imperator!” Pearl snapped, pointing an accusing finger. “He was one of the Snatchers! The kind that brought us to the Citadel!”

Crook felt as if the breath had stopped in her throat. She waited for the Feral to defend himself, to say anything, anything at all, but he only stood there, looking blank and resigned, his hands at his sides and his shoulders hunched. Braith shook her head. “He can’t be. They were— he was a bloodbag.”

“Yeah, my bloodbag,” said the Storm Boy. “If you don’t believe him, he’s got his old name on his back somewhere. But he can’t use it. Ain’t allowed. Right, Bloodbag?”

“Liar,” spat Crook, and the ferocity of her defense startled even herself as she whirled on the Storm Boy. “Liar! He’s good and— and defended us, and helped us, and— and— Feral, tell him! You’re no Imperator. You’re not a Snatcher…”

But he only stood there, his face expressionless as the night sky. “We can’t stay here,” he said. “We have to get out of this mud and keep moving.”

“You— you—” Fury filled Crook, and she flew at him, wordless sounds of rage ripping past her throat as she collided into him and they both fell into the mud. “Liar!” she screamed, so loud she hoped all the Waste could hear, and hit him in the chest. He didn’t even defend himself, just lay there and let her hit him, and she hated it: why didn’t he hit her back, strike out at her? “Liar, thief,  _ thief, _ you let  _ Hang _ die and I  _ hate  _ you, I hate you, you probably  _ stole _ her in the first place—”

“Crook get  _ off him _ !” shrieked Braith, and she felt hands pulling, but she was too crazed with anger and grief to know whose hands they were. She thrashed as they dragged her into the mud, away from his body. “Crook!”

“ _ Hate you!” _ she shrieked, and flung a handful of mud at him as he sat up, coughing. 

In the distance, far off, an engine revved, roaring. 

“Oh,  _ rust, _ ” said the Storm Boy in horror. “They heard us.”

“Hux, get the sheet under the wheels!” shouted Pearl, who took command as simply as if she’d always done it while Crook sat seething in the cold mud. “He can drive. Crook, get up! Braith, help Hux!”

“Where are you going?” shouted Braith, struggling to assist the Storm Boy with the sheet metal.

“To get the rifle!” she shouted, climbing back up into the cab of the Rig.

Crook stood, her knees wobbling. Her anger and fury had to be shunted off, out to the side: their lives were at stake, and there was no time for it. The Feral had already clambered up into the cab and tried to accelerate, but the wheels were hardly catching. “Further back!” he barked over the side. “Shove it further down!”

Braith slipped trying to do it and fell, getting back up and trying again. The mud was clinging, claylike, wet. Crook took a few slogging steps and called up, “Throw the other panel down! We need traction on the other front wheel!”

“I’ll get it!” Pearl shouted, and climbed up, finding it and tossing it over. Crook ran for it, lugged it around to the front, and wedged it under the left front wheels.

“Go!” she screamed, and the Feral eased the acceleration slowly, the wheels finally catching and pulling up, and up, and rolling. 

“Find us solid ground!” he bellowed down to her, and Crook turned and ran ahead, panting, the mud squelching around her toes.  _ Solid dirt. High ground.  _ Every step was a heartbeat, every breath a step. 

Gunfire erupted behind her, distant and dim, sharp pinging from where they were ricocheting off the Rig. Her heart leaped into her throat— they must be visible to whoever was chasing them, then, and they were close to being taken again.

_ Not going back. Not going back. I’d rather die. Die free. Like Hang. Like Hang.  _

Her feet slammed solid, packed earth, and she halted so fast she almost fell. “Here!” she cried, turning and waving at the Rig, just visible in the wan light. “Here, up here!” It was higher ground, and there was a smooth incline ahead for easy driving. 

The Rig roared in response, trundling along toward her, and she stepped out of the way as it gained on her, looming in the dark. It had hardly come to a stop before the Feral was tumbling out of the cab. “Rifle,” he said tightly, looking back at the just-visible oncoming storm from what had to have been the Bullet Farm. A searchlight was sweeping for them.

Pearl had it, and pressed it into his hands. He turned, kneeling on the hard earth, and held it up, sighting down the barrel, but his hands were trembling— whether it was from exhilaration or exhaustion, Crook didn’t know. “How many more shots do we have in it?” asked Braith quietly. 

“One,” he grunted.

Crook looked at him, and he looked at her, then handed the rifle over with a self-deprecating little noise and shrug. She handed it to Braith without a word, who looked back, her pale face set in grim determination. He knelt and patted his shoulder, looking back, and Braith understood: she squatted behind his broad back and rested the rifle on his shoulder, the barrel extending out past his face. She lined up the shot, sighted it, sighed gently. 

“Don’t breathe,” she whispered to the Feral, who froze, stone-still.

The shot went off. Far away, there was a tinkle like glass breaking, and a faint cry. Braith stood and helped the Feral up, who swayed a moment, momentarily deafened by the report of the rifle. “Good work,” she said calmly. 

He acknowledged her with a grunt and turned, speaking slightly too loudly. “Take the Rig up another half-klick. Her engines need coolant. We need more bullets.”

“Where are you going?” demanded the Gink, watching him take up the knife and one of the canvas bags, emptied of its contents. 

“To get them. Just head up there.” He pointed with the knife.

“What— what do we do if you’re not back by the time the engines cool down?” asked Pearl.

He regarded her, then Crook, with a bewildered expression. “You… keep going,” he explained, as if it should have been obvious. “Over the Spine Ridge. You’ll see it when the sun comes up.”

“But—” Crook bit her cheek as he turned, ignoring her, and walked off into the dark, the empty bag slung over his back. Well, there wouldn’t be any use waiting: she turned and climbed up to help fill a container with water. Hux the Storm Boy was already gearing up the Rig to drive up further, and they had some time before the engines would cool.

* * *

An hour later, while the moon was sinking toward the horizon and the engines on the Rig were fresh and rested, he came back to them in the dark, bandoliers of bullets slung over his shoulders and the canvas bag stuffed full, his knife hanging at his side.

Crook watched him as he walked up, heaved a tired sigh, put the bullets down, and tossed something out of the canvas sack at Hux, who had come up to meet him. It was a pair of boots. Hux stared at them and gave a little half-smile before jamming them onto his bare feet. 

“Are you hurt?” asked Braith, staring at his face. A stain of something dark and glistening smeared his cheek and forehead, all the way down his neck. He stared at her for a moment like he wasn’t sure what she meant. “You have… blood,” she tried, gesturing. He just turned aside and began to wash his face in one of the buckets hanging by the tank of water.

“It ain’t his blood,” said Crook, understanding. 

He came up for air after a couple of handfuls of water on his face, drinking out of his cupped hands. “They won’t be following,” he said hoarsely, his voice gone to pieces. “Engines ready?”

“Just about,” said Hux, glancing up at where Pearl was screwing the lid to the coolant tank back on. “Climb aboard. Who’s driving?”

“Me,” said Crook. “Feral takes the passenger side. I can find my way over the Ridge. You should all sleep.”

* * *

It wasn’t hard at all, once the sun had started peering up over the edge of the world, to pick a path through the Spine Ridge— and it very much looked like a spine, knobby and cragged, thought Crook as she maneuvered the War Rig through the quiet pass that the Feral had mentioned before falling dead asleep where he sat beside her. It was almost peaceful like this, the light grey foredawn giving way to pale orange and gold, illuminating the rock and the soil below. And it was beautiful, too: she could see what looked like straggling, branching organics growing out of the rock at funny angles, sun-bleached white against the dark earth—  _ trees. _ That was the name. She’d nearly forgotten. The garden at the Bio Dome seemed far away and long ago, like a story already.

Beside her, the Feral jerked in his sleep, then brought himself upright with a choked-off sob, his wild eyes opening and staring around as he found her. “It’s okay,” she found herself saying, nodding at him before turning her attention back to the path. “We’re just coming through the pass.”

He said nothing, only looked out the window for a moment to get his bearings. “Mm.” 

“How come you never went out this way when you ran off from the Citadel?” she asked, shooting him a sideways look. “If you— if you ran off, and you know about this place, this way to get out— why didn’t you take it before?”

The Feral didn’t answer for a long time. She could see the bone-tired shadows of exhaustion on his face, despite the hours of sleep he’d snatched. “Dunno,” he said finally. “Job wasn’t done.”

“What job? Snatching kids for breeding?” He flinched from the acid in her tone, and she glared away from him and out to the road again. “You’re pathetic, you know that? All those years dragging them—  _ us _ , all us girls to the Dome for inspections and tests and hell knows what else, and now you’re so jumpity and scared you can’t even face what you done. Pearl doesn’t even know her own name. I—  _ I _ don’t even know my own name anymore. Don’t you understand that? Or did you never have a name to begin with?” He didn’t answer. “Don’t tell me. I saw it inked on your back. Ren, wasn’t it?”

“That was the name I was given,” he said, in a flat, dull voice. “Like you were given Crook. Like all the others were given names.”

“Don’t you pretend for a second you been through anything like I have,” she snarled, bridling like an animal. “Not for a second.”

Something stirred in the Feral’s eyes as he turned to face her. “Yeah,” he growled, “sleeping in beds and having everything you could want is  _ much _ worse’n being strung up and branded and drained of all your blood.”

She wished she could set the Rig to drive itself so she could hit him. “Do you know how many times I’ve had something growing inside me where I couldn’t see? Something I had to pretend was  _ his? _ Four. Four times. Only one ended in a baby. And she died a week after she was born. A week.” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she fought against them, struggling to breathe. “She was so beautiful. So perfect. She h-had a perfect little mouth, and eyelashes: you could count every single one. Little tiny hands, ten fingers, ten toes—and she went to sleep and never woke up again. Don’t you tell me you know what that’s like. What that does. You’ve never birthed a baby.” The tears were pouring hot down her face, and she could barely see the pass. “I wish I’d died instead,” she sobbed, gripping the wheel with both hands. “Not her. He didn’t even name her. Didn’t bother. Didn’t care. ‘Cause she was a girl. Just a stupid, useless girl but she was  _ mine, _ all mine and he d-didn’t c-care—”

A hand touched her face, and she flinched, half-blind from tears. The Feral was wiping her cheeks and eyes clear with a careful hand. “Don’t waste your water,” he said, but it was gentle, not cruel. The callouses and scars on his hand were rough, and she stayed very still as he pulled back into himself, looking out the window. 

Crook managed to take a few breaths and get hold of herself. “I would have rather they beat me,” she said quietly. “Yanked my hair out, branded me. Anything has to be better than that pain.”

“There’s different kinds of pain,” he said after a moment of contemplation. “And girls aren’t stupid. Or useless. What did you name her?”

She let her hand leave the wheel to wipe her nose. “Keera,” she whispered. “We buried her under the rosebush in the Dome garden. So whenever I saw it, I thought of her. And I didn’t want to leave her there, all alone… but I thought, well, she has the roses to keep her company, and she doesn’t need me no more, does she?” Fresh tears threatened to blur her vision. “I dunno why I’m crying. It was ages ago.”

“Old things still hurt,” he said gruffly. “Like  _ Ren. _ ”

“I won’t call you Ren if you don’t want me to,” she mumbled. “I was just mad, ‘cause of what Pearl said about you being a Snatcher.”

“I can’t go back and undo what I’ve done,” he told her as the Rig began a slope downwards, gentle and even. “Nobody can. Hm. Just have to… do the right things. Finish the job.”

“And how do you finish this job?” she asked, glancing over at his long, strange face as she steered. 

“Mm. Make things right.” He indicated her feet. “Ease up on the brake a little. Let her glide.”

“Oh.” Crook did as he said and fell into the easier rhythm of letting gravity carry the Rig downward. “I guess maybe you did have it hard, too. I’d rather die’n be a bloodbag.” She shuddered. “Can’t stand needles anyhow.”

“Well, once it’s in, you don’t feel too much,” he said, his mouth twitching.


	7. Chapter 7

The Rig glided onto packed earth, and then a flat, pebbly landscape so unlike anything Crook had seen that she parked the Rig where it was still drivable and got out, waking the other women and Hux up. “Look at the ground!” she shouted, her boots crunching on the heavy stones. 

“The wind’s so strong,” said the Gink, clutching her shawl tight as she stumbled over the uneven ground. And it was: it was breezy and even, with a strangely constant roaring sound in the air that made Braith cower against Pearl and stare wide-eyed. “What's that noise?” 

“Let’s find out,” said Crook, marching straight on. “I smell something— salty. D’you smell it?”

“Smells like… I don't know,” said Pearl, bewildered as they marched on. “Crook— look, that’s  _ grass. _ ”

All four women and the Feral paused to look at the tuft of grass sprouting from the ground: hardy and pale green and long-bladed, whipping in the wind—an ugly shape, and odd-colored, but  _ grass _ , where they’d never seen green things apart from the Citadel before. “Is this the Green Place after all?” asked Braith, reaching out tremulously and touching the grass blades. Hux just stared like he couldn’t comprehend it.

“Not green enough,” said the Gink practically. “Keep walking. What’s over that rise?”

Crook scrambled to the edge and looked over, and her mouth fell open.  _ Water, _ water as far as she could see, stretching out from below to the horizon, and there were great big rolls of it crashing to the shore in white foam, splattering across sand and stone, the wind ruffling other grassy tufts below. “Water!” she shrieked, shocked, and tumbled down the edge, running and stumbling to reach it. “There’s so much! Hurry, come see!”

“Don’t drink it!” shouted the Feral, but he was too late: Crook had already plunged her head in and come up spitting and making faces.

“Salt!” she howled, and came thrashing back out of the waves. “Oh, it’s  _ awful _ _!”_

The other women came running up, yanking their boots off: Braith was terrified to even touch it, but forced herself to shove both feet in anyway with a scream of delighted horror; Pearl scooped some up and threw it at the Gink, who dunked her head in retaliation and began to scrub her muddy feet clean. Hux stepped closer and closer, his eyes bulging out of his head, until he was ankle-deep, then sat down flump into the wet sand, mouth hanging open as he took it in.

“I thought… I thought the Immortan had all the water in the whole world,” he whispered.

Crook splashed back up to the Feral, who was staring, wet-eyed and wild, at the water. “Come get in,” she entreated, pointing. “It’s cool.”

“It’s still here,” he croaked, and took a step forward. “The ocean.”

“The— ocean? This is where those whales live?”

“It’s  _ here _ ,” he said, and took another step, then another, wading in out to his waist, his hands out at his sides. He dipped below, and Crook shouted, thinking he’d been snatched by some unseen thing, but he popped back up , his black hair sleekly stuck to his head, and tilted his face back at the sky, mouth open. 

She thought he was screaming, a silent shout, but he was crying, his shoulders shaking as the water surged past his chest. Silently, his words took shape in his mouth:  _ it’s here, it’s here.  _

* * *

They’d all slopped back out of the water and were trying to wipe the sticky salt from their bodies when the sounds of revving engines echoed down the shoreline. Hux immediately leaped into high alert, snatching up his rifle, and the Feral grabbed one of the shotguns, herding the women against the sandy cliff so he could face outward. Three dark specks, far off, were coming towards them.

As they got closer, the Gink tugged on Crook’s arm. “They aren’t Citadel,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen bikes like that.”

“Me neither,” said Crook, staring with interest: these vehicles had flat, long legs that stood out on the sand, letting the bikes glide along smoothly. The three of them came to a halt a few meters away, and then someone got off the first one, walking toward them with their hands raised. 

“No harm meant,” they said in muffled tones. “Lower the guns, boys.”

Confused, Hux did as asked, and so did the Feral. The person took off the headwrap and goggles that protected their face from sand, and revealed— 

“Miss Ammie?” said Braith instantly, shocked. Crook did a double take— it  _ was _ Ammie, one of the old Wives, one who’d had too many wrong babies and been banished from the Citadel to certain death in the Waste… but she was _here_ , here and alive and smiling at them with her sharp blue eyes and sweet smile, her curly gray hair stuck to her sweaty face. 

“Little Braith. Pearl! Gink! What are you all doing so far away from the Citadel?”

“The Green Place,” Crook said, stumbling forward and almost shoving Hux aside. “Please. Tell us. Where…”

“Oh, Crook,” said Ammie, holding her arms wide, and Crook rushed her, clinging to her tightly. “My girls, my sweet girls, all grown up. You came all this way for the Green Place?”

The other figures dismounted, too, and unwrapped their scarves: one was tiny, short, with earth-brown skin and goggles that magnified her eyes, and the other had bulging, pale eyes and a long, sharp nose. They drew close to the girls in curiosity, reaching out their hands, and they let themselves be prodded gently at, touched, marveled over. “The men?” asked the woman with the sharp nose.

“We picked them up along the way. They’re friends,” explained Crook, watching the tiny woman shoot a glance at the Feral and Hux. Her expression changed suddenly, and she adjusted her lenses, scuttling over and staring at the Feral. 

“You,” she said, sounding sure of herself, and much louder than her stature seemed to permit. “I know your eyes. I’ve seen your eyes before.”

The Feral knelt in the sand, looking the woman in the face. “I was... a son,” he said hoarsely, ragged and broken. “Once. My mother was— was—” His face crumpled. “I don’t remember,” he whispered. “Her face. Name. I don’t remember.”

“I do,” said the tiny woman. “I’m Maz, the Seedwoman. I knew your mother. Her eyes are in your face. I don’t remember your name, though. Just hers. She was Leia. Leia, of the Organics. She tended our gardens when we had them.”

“And I’m Dacey,” said the woman with the large eyes. She swung a long rifle over her shoulder and eyed them up. “Where’s Lonia?”

Pearl shook her head. “Miss Loanie had to stay behind. She said she was too old to go, but she sent us. Please— where’s the Green Place? With the mothers and the babies? Is this it?”

“Oh, child,” said Ammie softly. “No, this isn’t it. We had to move it years ago. Too dangerous, too many raids from the Citadel.”

“Where is it?” said Crook, so agitated she thought she might split at the seams. “You’ve got to take us there, please— we lost Hang, she’s dead, and the Gink’s about to birth that baby—you don’t know what all we’ve  _ done _ to get here. Killed, and— and— please, you  _ have  _ to tell us.”

“It’s out there,” said Ammie, waving a hand toward the vast expanse of water, the thing the Feral had called an  _ ocean. _ “Out a piece, far away. There’s an island in the sea where nobody can drive a Rig to, where nobody from the Citadel can reach. We’ve built another Green Place there: we moved the dirt and the seeds, and we built places to live there, high up. There’s mothers there— fathers too, and children.”

“The ground was too poisonous here,” said Maz, looking down. “For so long. There was a place underground, far beneath, further north, where the nuclear bombs never touched— had to mine it out. Start fresh. Traded it some, too. Better than gold, or mother’s milk.”

“But it’s coming back,” said Dacey, looking at the hardy sea-grass. “Slowly, I think.”

“You’re here now, and not on the island?” asked Crook. “What for?”

“Needed more earth.” Dacey showed her the sack she carried, full of dark, black earth, rich and thick. “We come every so often for more. I’ll take it over on the boat.”

“What’s a boat?” piped up Braith, wide-eyed. 

“A thing for driving on water,” said Crook impatiently. “Didn’t you never pay attention to Miss Loanie?”

“Our is moored up round the bend,” said Ammie, pointing back. “We can take you on. But you’ve had a long road. Better we sit in the safe harbor and rest a bit.”

* * *

The fire they built was made of burning, white-bleached dead wood that crackled in flames the color of a bruise: blue, lavender, yellow. Crook sat by the Feral, who had seemed like a man in a trance since they’d told him his mother’s name, and ate half a loaf of bread: fresh-baked far over the water in the Green Place. She didn’t want to eat it at first: it was like a dream, food from another world. It was delicious, though, so she gobbled it down with fresh water and shared it with the Feral and with Braith.

The Gink sat by Dacey, who listened to her belly and felt for her pulse and took a look at her nethers, which nobody really minded—apart from Hux, who’d hardly ever seen women, let alone heavily pregnant ones, and turned the other way, his ears red. Pearl gave him a wry smile. “She’s got to look up there. The baby’s on the other end.”

“I know that,” he said, choosing to stare into the flames. 

“And I know something else,” announced Dacey, pulling away from the Gink and covering her again. “It’s dropped. She’s ready. Any day now. We can take you all over the sea to the island and she can have it there with the rest of the mothers.” Beside Crook, the Feral stiffened, but said nothing. “We cross in the morning if we can. Takes a good few hours to get there. We don’t want to lose our way in the dark.”

“Stay with us tonight,” said Ammie gently. “Stay and eat and rest.”

“We can give you guzzoline in exchange for the crossing,” said Pearl.

Ammie and Maz exchanged looks. “My girl, it’s a gift, not a bargain. You owe us nothing in exchange.”

Hux shifted. “This island… there’s no Storm Boys there?”

“None. Ain’t none of them ever escaped this far out before.” Maz sat down with her legs crossed and peered at him through her goggles. “You thinking of coming?”

“Dunno. Maybe.” He looked at the sand, eyes blank. “Never thought of any other place to be in but the Citadel.”

“I don’t want to have this baby here,” said the Gink, sitting up heavily. “I want to have it somewhere safe. With the Mothers. I want to go.” Tears gathered in her large dark eyes. 

“I want to go with you,” said Braith from her quiet corner. “I’m tired of all the running and dying, and— and wars. I’m just tired.”

“And you, Pearl? Crook?” Ammie looked up, her sharp eyes gleaming in the bright sun. 

“I’m thinking,” said Crook shortly, looking down at her hands. 

“Well, there’s no rush,” said Dacey. “Nobody can find us here, anyway. It’s out of all reach, and there’s no drinkable water, so the warlords don’t come here. Think all you like.”

* * *

The sun had set in a blaze, sinking down into the ocean, and they had watched it go with wonder and some terror: they’d never seen a sun fall into the sea. Ammie assured them it would come up just the same in the morning, and they sheltered in some shallow caves along the cliffs by the shore, fires crackling. 

The Feral and Hux took one: Braith, Crook, and Pearl took the second, and the older women took a third and shared with Gink, who they wanted to keep a close eye on. Crook could not sleep, not even when Braith and Pearl had shut their eyes, and she got up, wrapping herself in a blanket to shield from the chill, to walk out and look at the ocean.

It was very dark. The white breakers were faint, ghostly in the waning moonlight, and the roar of the waves sounded like a heartbeat as she stood on the stones in her too-big boots, listening.  _ I thought the world was dead. But here they are with fertile soil and seeds, taking it to grow things… and there is grass on the beach here. It’s coming back. It’s living again.  _

The sound of heavy footsteps crunching on stone alerted her. She turned to see the Feral coming towards her, holding a lamp that cast his strange, long face into shadow and light. “Can’t sleep either?” she asked as he stopped about three feet from her. 

“Mm. Can I… talk to you?” he asked, in a stilted, awkward way, like he wasn’t used to asking. She nodded and sat down, and he did the same, his knees up as he looked out over the dim breakers. “I… want to go back,” he began, eyes flickering between her and the ocean.

“Back?” she said, startled. “What?”

“Let me finish,” he said as he fidgeted. “Not… back to stay. But the Dome has seeds, and growing things. Valuable things. Soil.”

“Water,” said Crook, remembering. “He’s got so much water pumped up out of the ground. Barely lets anyone touch it. Hoards it away.”

“Water,” he agreed. “So. I was thinking. We go back. He won’t expect it. Catch him by surprise. Take the seeds. Some. The people in the Citadel… could be free. With water, and growing things. By themselves.”

“They won’t be free as long as the Immortan’s alive.” Crook looked back out over the endless expanse of water, feeling something strange coiling in her belly. “Pearl might come back with us, with her Storm Boy, if he wants to come. The four of us, in the Rig.”

“Us,” echoed the Feral, and something twitched under his left eye, a muscle there trembling. “Mm.”

“We’ll have to kill him,” she said quietly, tucking her knees to her chin. “No sons, no more warlords. No masters. And we’ll come back, and find a way to the island. Build a boat. Or meet Ammie again. One day.”

“That’s what you want?” he asked, shooting her a sideways look in the lamplight.

“I don’t know,” she muttered, scrubbing her dirty face with her dirtier hands. “I just don’t want to be alone again. Without a name, or my sisters, or anyone. I want to be safe. I want  _ them _ to be safe, ‘cause it’s my fault this all—I was the one who said we should go to the Green Place. And I thought… I thought it would be easy. Just going and staying. But there’s more to do now, ‘cause there’s other people who need help, and I didn’t think about that. Didn’t think about the world, ‘cause it was dead, far as I knew. But it ain’t dead. Is it, Feral?”

“Mm. No. Healing.” He pointed up at where she knew the sea-grass was growing. “All right. We’ll go back. You and me and the rest who want to come.”

“What do  _ you _ want, then?” she asked, tilting her head to look at him. “All of this. You wanted to get away from the Citadel more’n us, I think, and now you want to go back.”

“I want… things to be better,” he said quietly after a moment, looking at the lamp instead of her. “To make it right. If I can. All the things I did for him.”

“Oh, right. You said so, before we got here, didn’t you?” She tucked her feet under her body and looked at him again. “You think killing him’ll make things right?”

He hesitated, his eyes far away. “No. Won’t undo the wrong I did. But it might stop it from happening again.”

“Mm. Well.” Crook looked back out at the water. “How big d’you think it is?”

“The ocean?” he asked, looking out. “Miles and miles. This used to be… a long time ago—uh, covered in forests. And it was cold. Big trees, bigger than anything. Wet and cold and rainy, with rocky shores. But out there, past the ocean…they called it the Pacific. Means peaceful. And way out beyond the water, thousands and thousands of klicks away, there’s other lands. Islands and things, before the oceans rose up and drowned them.”

“More islands? Like the one the Green Place is on?”

“Mm. Big ones. Small ones. And past them, the countries. Land as far as you can walk.”

“You think they’re dead like this one? Or green?” Crook rested her chin on her fist.

The Feral waited a long time to answer. “Green,” he said finally. “Growing. The sky’s… blue, there, not yellow. And the water’s good to drink everywhere.”

“The Bio Dome. But all one land,” whispered Crook, closing her eyes. “I’d like to see that.”

“Maybe one day,” he said. “First… we have work to do.”


	8. Chapter 8

The sun rose on the War Rig, shimmering heat rising off the sand and rock as Hux helped the Feral pack it up for the drive back. “I still think you’re crazy,” he said, hefting a canvas bag into the cab. 

“Mm,” said the Feral. “Who’s crazier, a crazy man or a man who follows him?”

Hux spluttered and moved off, counting the rest of the bullets while Pearl lifted a jug of clean water into the back. Crook turned to Dacey and the Gink. “We’ll come back,” she said firmly, clasping the Gink’s hand in hers. “Promise.”

The Gink’s eyes were wet. “It ain’t fair. You’ll be out there and I’ll be in the Green Place.”

“You got a baby to take care of,” Crook told her, resting a hand on the curve of her belly. “And it’s coming soon. So go. Braith, you watch over her for me.”

“I will,” said Braith, embracing her. “Oh, Crook, don’t die. Come back.”

“I’ll try,” said Crook, hugging her back and letting go quickly. 

Dacey put a hand on the girls’ shoulders. “I’ll get them back safe. Don’t you worry about these two.”

“And I’m coming with you,” said Ammie, hefting her rifle over her shoulder and marching toward the Rig. “No, don’t argue. I’ve seen what the Immortan does. Lived it. I won’t let it happen to another.”

“You might not come back,” said Maz softly.

Ammie threw the rifle up into the cab. “Mm. Then that’s that. I’m old anyway, Maz. The young need hope, not the old. We can give it to them now.” Their eyes met, and Maz blinked, her enormous eyes magnified by the goggles she wore. 

“Mm. That’s so.” She pressed her fist to her mouth and extended it outward toward Ammie, the fingers splayed, and Ammie returned the gesture. It seemed a salute to Crook’s eyes, something left over from a long time past. She didn’t understand it, but she felt the weight of it anyway. “Travel hard and well.”

“I will,” said Ammie, saluting Dacey too before she climbed up into the Rig. “Let’s go. We have a long road back into his territory, and day’s coming on fast.”

* * *

The road back was hot and dry and dusty as it had been. Crook sat in the passenger seat while the Feral drove, Ammie behind him navigating and Pearl and Hux in the back preparing for anything. She could hear Pearl telling the Storm Boy about life in the Dome, and the Storm Boy telling Pearl about life in the Pits, as a Storm Pup and then as a man grown. 

She envied Pearl: her openness, her ease of speaking. That had never come easy to Crook, nor had making friends. It hadn’t been a thing she’d needed to do up until now, either. Part of her wished she could speak to the Feral like Pearl had spoken to Hux: about her life, her past. To ask him questions: who had he really been, before he’d been an Imperator? Who was he? 

That didn’t matter, now. They had passed the old riverbed and gone down toward the valleys and canyons again, and her spine tingled with anticipation: was the Immortan still out here? Waiting for them to return? Or had he gone back to the Citadel?

She got her answer soon enough as Hux peered through a spy-scope. “I see the caravan,” he said quickly, pointing. “North-west of us. And there’s Snoke’s Supremacy, chrome and rip-roaring. Twenty or thirty others with him.”

“It’ll be a battle, then, if he’s seen us,” said Ammie sternly, swinging her rifle front. “Whatever happens, we can’t let them get on the Rig or blow out the tires. You understand?”

The Feral muttered in assent, focused on the road, and obeyed her order to take it down a slope into the flat land, open and free, where the road was packed hard. “They’ve spotted us,” he said tersely, looking out the window.

“Good. Keep going.” Ammie rummaged in her pack and tossed a few items out the window. Crook had just enough time to see that they were small: rusted metal, but as the oncoming vehicles roared over them, they exploded, sending the cars sky-high. 

“Woo!” shrieked Hux, delighted. “Shine! Can I have one, Miss Ammie?”

“Go on and toss it out the back,” she told him, handing him a few. “They’re primed. Hurry.”

They took out ten or so vehicles like that until the Citadel cars changed tack and swung wide, accelerating to come parallel with the Rig but not behind it. Crook clambered to the window and rested her shotgun on the sill, aiming out at the screaming Storm Boys inching closer with their blacked eyes, whooping and wailing. She fired, and they went down, replaced by more. “Can we kill ‘em all?” she shouted over the wind.

“Not all! Not enough ammo. Shoot smarter, don’t waste it!” Ammie sighted down the barrel of her own rifle and picked off a few more Storm Boys. “Feral! Drive faster!”

“It can only go so fast!” he roared back, steely-eyed and focused on the road. “The engine’ll overheat!”

“Damn!” barked Ammie, and turned back. “Then stay the course steady!”

Crook turned to the right and saw the Immortan’s Supremacy veering wildly out of the caravan, accelerating easily up to level with the cab. Inside, she saw Imperator Dameron, driving, and Snoke himself, standing and facing her with his head and shoulders out of the open roof. “Crook!” he screamed, fury in his eyes. “Crook! Pearl! You’ve killed my Hang! My child!”

“Our Hang!” screamed Pearl right back, aiming her shotgun at him. “Ours, not yours!”

Imperator Finn was aiming at her, his dark, dust-caked face full of pain. “Pearl!” he shouted, hands on his own gun. “Put it down!”

“You’d shoot _me_?” she bellowed. “Traitor!”

He fired. The bullet pinged off the side of the Rig, and Pearl sucked in a breath of shock, then fired right back. She missed, and Finn scrambled back into the Supremacy’s cab as Dameron guided it closer. 

“Left! Watch left!” screamed Hux, and the Feral jerked the wheel, knocking aside the car of Storm Boys with poles that had attempted to board from the left side of the Rig. Hux tumbled to the floorboards and threw a few more mines out of the windows, aiming for the front of the vehicles. Some of them went off and knocked the cars out of the road, tumbling over, but many did not. 

“Stop wasting my  _ mines!” _ shouted Ammie, cuffing him on the head. “Shoot! Here!” She handed him the other rifle, and he propped it up, firing out of the back and taking down a few more Storm Boys. 

Snoke was still coming from the right. “You’re my  _ property!” _ he bellowed, red in the face. The protective armor, painted gold, that he wore on the road glimmered in the hot sunlight, the chains glittering like treasure. Crook felt herself quail a moment:  _ a god, a god, he is— _ “Come back to me even now, and I will forgive your sins!”

“No going back,” she gasped through numb lips, and loaded the revolver, aiming and firing. She hit the window, right by Imperator Dameron’s head, and he jerked to look at her with wild eyes.  _ Scrap me, I almost killed— _

“Engine’s overheating!” barked the Feral. White smoke was billowing out of the hood, and they were coming up on the canyons: visibility was scrapped, and Dameron took advantage of it to accelerate, trapping the Rig behind the Supremacy. 

“No!” shouted Ammie, frustrated. Crook looked around wildly: rock to right and left, the whole caravan behind, the Supremacy in front. They were trapped. 

_ Or are we? _

She turned and stuck the knife into her belt. “Don’t stop driving!” she shouted at them, and began to climb out of the passenger window, her boots steady on the metal as the Feral shouted in alarm and Ammie yelled at her to come back. The wind whipped hot at her face and hair as she inched down the smelting-hot hood, reaching out her hand to Imperator Finn, who was staring at her in disbelief. “Finn!” she screamed. “Help me!”

“Crook!” he called, and reached for her. She realized a moment too late that she hadn’t seen the others in the Supremacy: there were Pryde and Taka, both allies of Snoke, who she didn’t trust;  _ I’ll have to kill them, too.  _

Her hand found Finn’s, and he tugged her into the Supremacy over a gap of hardly a foot. “What were you  _ thinking, _ you fool girl, coming back here—” he gasped into her ear so only she could hear.

“Shut up,” she panted, wiping dust from her eyes. The knife was still hidden in her belt. “Get me to him.”

* * *

Back on the Rig, the Feral was trying to understand what had just happened. Crook had willingly surrendered to the Supremacy, and Ammie was still shooting wildly out of the back window. Two Storm Boys had boarded from behind, whooping, and Hux had climbed out to deal with them while Pearl sat behind him, frozen in fear.

“She went back,” she whispered, horrified. 

“She took the knife,” said the Feral, slowly understanding, and through the fog of smoke and dust, he could see her scuffling with people inside the large cab, fighting wildly, tooth and nail. “Pearl. Drive.”

She gaped. “If Crook needs help, I’m going!”

“I said  _ drive, _ ” he snarled, and she scrambled into the seat without another word as he grabbed his pack and swung out of the driver’s side window, climbing up to the roof for a better view.

Yes, there was Crook, being held and bound by Taka, that Imperator he’d always disliked—

_ Whunk.  _ Something hit him in the back of the thigh like a hammer, and he went crashing down, gasping as the pain bloomed through his body:  _ I’ve been shot.  _ He’d forgotten about the Storm Boys behind him on the Rig. 

_ Where are you? _

_ Hello? _

He turned, dazed, ears ringing. Someone was looming above him, bringing down a knife the size of his arm, and he rolled on instinct, listening to the metal clang and strike sparks off the hood. 

_ Hello? _

He raised himself up and lunged for the knees of the Storm Boy, and the other man went toppling off into the rock.

“Here,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I’m here, here.” He turned, crawling toward the grill on burning-hot metal. There was hardly any feeling in his leg anymore. “I’m here to help you,” he whispered, eyes fixed on Crook, who had been gagged. Snoke was standing there, holding her knife.

_ Where are you? _

“I’m here. I'm coming.”

* * *

Crook tried to spit out the dirty cloth they’d gagged her with, but it was too tight around her cheeks to dislodge. The Immortan was looking at her knife, shaking his head. “You came here to kill me, Crook?” he asked, as if the thought had never before occurred to him. “Me? Your redeemer? Your only hope?”

_ You’re not, you’re not! _ her mind was raging, but her mouth was silenced, and Taka was holding her steady.

“She’s just crazy from no water,” said Dameron, looking over his shoulder. 

“Don’t plead mercy for this traitor,” snarled the Immortan, turning and striking the driver in the head. “Or you’ll be one, too, Dameron, and I’ll scrap your shiny Fueler and turn you out into the Wasteland.”

“Boss,” said Pryde, looking out at the back window. “Is that… Imperator Ren?”

* * *

The Feral smashed through the back window with all his weight, dragging himself up to stand on one leg. The only weapon he had were his hands, and he crushed Taka’s windpipe like it was nothing, tossing his body out the back window before turning on Snoke and Pryde. Crook was getting free of her bonds frantically with help from Imperator Finn, and the Feral put that to the side for a moment: Snoke was grappling wildly with him, the golden chains on his armor clinking as he raged and roared and tried to hide behind Pryde.

“Traitor!” screamed Imperator Pryde, striking a blow to the Feral’s face as Snoke crawled up into the passenger seat by Dameron and searched around frantically.

Another blow gashed open the Feral’s mouth, blood spilling: a third bruised his eye.  _ Enough of this, _ he thought, and smashed his head against Pryde’s, knocking the man out before he turned on Snoke. 

Crook was already on him in the passenger seat, screaming like a wildcat and tearing at Snoke with her nails while Imperator Finn just… sort of sat and let her do it. “Liar, liar,  _ liar _ !” she raged, and the Feral saw that the passenger door had come unlatched, swinging wide: Crook was falling along with Snoke—

He lunged and grabbed them both, one for each hand, and Snoke looked up with shock, relief, even gratitude in that shriveled old hairless face. “My boy—”

“Never,” snarled the Feral, and dropped him. 

The golden chains tangled in the tires below, the two-meter-high tires: Snoke’s throat was torn from his body as it ripped apart in the wheel well like so much meat, leaving the blood-stained armor, splattered over the gold paint. 

Crook was clinging to his hands, unable to get any purchase, her head lower than her body. “Help,” she gasped, and he reached for her, reached—

A sinking, stabbing agony pierced his side, and he groaned aloud, all the air leaving him. Pryde had regained consciousness and stabbed him in the flank with his own knife, attempting to get revenge for his dead Immortan. Imperator Finn wrestled him away and killed him, but the Feral couldn’t see how: all he saw was Crook's filthy face staring up at him in horror, all he heard was her. 

_ I’m here. Help. I’m going to help.  _

He used the last ounce of strength he had to yank her up, groaning, and tugged her into the cab while Dameron turned, eyes wide. 

“You killed him,” he said, shocked. “You did it. You killed him.”

* * *

Crook half-dragged the Feral to the back sea of the Supremacy, lying him down before she stood up and screamed at the Rig, where Pearl was still driving, Hux and Ammie on the roof fighting off Storm Boys together. “Get aboard!” she wailed. “He’s dead!  _ He’s dead !” _

“Canyon’s ending up ahead!” shouted Dameron from the driver’s seat. “Tell ‘em to hurry it up, or we’ll be out in the waste without any cover!”

“Hurry!” yelled Crook. 

* * *

Pearl looked up as Ammie and Hux scrambled over the cab. “What’s happening?” she shouted as Ammie climbed in. 

“You need to go, my girl,” said the older woman gently, taking her cheek in her hand. “Climb out and go to the Supremacy. The canyon’s opening wide, and you need a clean getaway.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Rig needs a driver,” said Hux, understanding. “Can’t stop it here, or they’ll all get out.”

“No. You’re not gonna be left here,” protested Pearl. “You came all this way— you promised them—”

“I’m old, little Pearl. I know my true name, and I’ve seen everything there is to see. You go on. You have more to do, and learn, and know, and build. Go find a new world and make it better. You hear me?” She kissed Pearl’s forehead. “You were only three when you came to the Citadel. You and your sister. But I remember your names— your true names, you understand?”

“My name?” sobbed Pearl, clinging to the older woman.

“Yes. You and your sister. Listen to me carefully, now.” Ammie held her face gently. “You were called Rose, and your sister was named Paige by the parents who lost you to the Citadel. And you must not ever forget. You hear me, Rose?”

Pearl nodded through her tears. “Yes, Ammie.”

“Now go. Go before the time’s all gone.”

“I’ll stay with you,” said Hux, looking suddenly bone-tired and worn. He coughed, and blood spurted up from his throat, staining his white-dusted skin. “If I can, Miss Ammie.”

“You can,” said Ammie gently. “Rose—Pearl— go. Take the supplies. Hurry.”

Pearl scrambled for the last bag and slung it over her shoulders, then kissed them both on their cheeks before crawling out of the window and over the hood, reaching out for Finn, beloved Finn, who gathered her in safe and tight as she hunched in the backseat, looking back through the dirty windshield of the Rig that had been home to them for so long.

Through the glass, she could see Hux, nodding at her as he drifted off and whispering with bloody teeth:  _ Witness.  _

She looked right at him and nodded, and peace drifted over his features, Ammie beside him as the Supremacy left the canyon’s mouth and the enormous Rig turned sharply— too sharply to sustain traction. The whole thing crashed to its side, blocking the canyon, and the thousands of gallons of guzzoline inside leaked out into the sand. 

As the oncoming vehicles behind struck it, the smaller engines exploded, which set off a chain reaction that engulfed the whole of the Rig in a fireball that she could feel the heat of on her face, even kilometers away.

“Witnessed,” she whispered, lip quivering. 

* * *

“Your Feral’s not doing too great,” said Dameron tightly, looking back in the rearview mirror. 

“I know, I know!” barked Crook, frantic as she tore off the Feral’s burnt shirt. He was barely breathing, too: his lips were pale as paper under the blood on his face, and his right eye was swollen shut. 

“He’s punctured his lung,” said Finn, kneeling beside her on the floorboards. “”You have to— here.” He took the knife and steadied his hand, then stabbed the Feral again, shallowly enough to let out the air that had collected in his chest. 

The Feral choked, gasping for air, eye fluttering open and focusing first on Finn and then on Crook. “Ow,” he whispered, faint as wind. 

“He’s losing too much blood,” said Pearl, grasping his cold hands. “Look. Cold as ice, and his lips are white.”

Crook turned to her. “Where’s that— tubing? The needle?”

“My pack,” she said, understanding, and fished it out, the length of tubing and the two needles dangling. 

Fighting back a shudder of revulsion, Crook leaned down. “Tell me how to do it,” she whispered, tears on her cheeks. “Feral. Please. Tell me.”

He forced his lips apart. “One. My arm. The crook… elbow. Find… a vein.” He flopped his right arm out for her. “Hold the… tube up, high. The other needle… in your arm. Siphon. Gas tank. You just... stay higher.”

“Right.” Crook swallowed hard and took the needle, biting her lip. She knew her blood: it was the same as his.  _ I can save him. I can do it. I have to try... _

“Yours first,” he croaked, eye fluttering closed. His face was a tapestry of bruising and blood: they were in a pool of tacky, drying blood. 

“I’ll put pressure on it,” said Finn, folding a cloth and holding it steady against the bleeding stab wound. Crook felt as if, for a moment, she was outside her body, watching herself do things: she took the needle and sank it into her own arm as if in a dream, holding it steady while Pearl raised the tube high for her. A red line of life ran down it, and Crook took the Feral’s large, dirty arm, pushing past the barrier of skin with the other needle until it sank in and met his vein, and her life ran into his body. 

“I’ve got you,” she whispered as Pearl hooked the tube to a ceiling-bracket and tied a rag around her arm to keep the needle steady. Crook inched closer and lifted the Feral up by the neck, letting him rest his head in her lap as she cradled him close. Finn kept pressure on the bleeding hole in his side while Pearl scrambled to stop the bleeding from his shot leg. “I’m here. I’m going to help you. Stay alive, yeah?”

His eye cracked open again, the warm color almost gold in the sunlight. “Rey,” he rasped, faint and weak. “Rey. Your name… is Rey.”

Crook felt frozen to the floor.  _ Rey.  _ She’d heard that name… but when? “What?” she whispered, leaning down to hear him.

“It’s… my fault,” he managed, lighter than a breath. “I brought you. To the Citadel.”

“Don’t, don’t try to talk,” she whispered, stroking his hair. “Shh.”

“I was. Nineteen. You were… ten. Looked… so much younger. Starving.” Tears were welling up in his eye, dripping down the side. “Starving. You’re… the girl. I knew you. All this... time. I knew…”

Her sight was blurred. Something wet dripped down her cheeks. “It’s okay,” she whispered, shaking her head, freeing her sight from tears. “It’s all over now. We’re going home, Feral. You don’t have to worry.” He sucked in a shallow breath, trying to focus on her with one eye. 

“Ben,” he wheezed, forcing his numb, colorless lips to part. “My... name is… Ben.”

She held him close, silently stroking his hair as the Supremacy rolled along the packed earth, the only sound the engines.


	9. Chapter 9

EPILOGUE

The boat grinds ashore on the rocky island beach. Overhead, gulls wheel, sparse and badly-feathered things with loose pinions, but strong enough to fly. A man steps out of the boat: he’s broad through the shoulder and hip, solidly built, wearing salvaged canvas pants and a loose, dark gray shirt under a jacket that’s damp with sea-spray and white-rimed with salt. 

He tethers the boat with ease, hefting twin canvas packs out, and slings them over his shoulders, making his way up the pebbly shoreline to the thick, wet moss on the rocks and the gently waving, green grass beyond it, up where the saltwater can’t poison the roots. Black boots crunch gently into the soil as he walks with a slight limp: black hair ruffles free and long in the hearty breeze.  Crossing the rise, he pauses to breathe in the clean air, and is immediately mobbed by children, children of every color, age, and temperament who clamp onto his thighs, tug at his elbows, squeal out in joy at the sight of the packs. 

“What’d you bring us?” cries one young boy, his blond hair loose and long and tied back. “Food?”

“Some,” he answers, smiling despite himself. “Ease back on the throttle.”

“You mean the  _ outboard motor, _ ” corrects an older girl, gap-toothed and know-it-all. 

“Right, sorry,” says the man, and dumps out one of the sacks, revealing a hoard of food, trinkets, clothing, seed packs, and shoes. The children descend in glee, the older ones picking up the food and clothing and the younger ones tugging at the trinkets. “Share it,” he directs, standing back up and slinging his other pack. “Where’s the Seedwoman?”

“In the garden!” shouts a boy of maybe ten, and picks up a tin whistle with astonishment. “What’s this—” He blows it, emitting a low shriek, and the children all scream in joy and horror.

The man walks away, leaving them to their play. He knows his path well enough. Down into the green valley, up the hill, past a few Mothers at work with their babies strapped to their backs, and then up into the high-ground plateau where there had once been a lighthouse, long ago: that’s where the Garden is, and as he enters it, dripping with greenery and vines and smelling of fertile soil and nitrates, he sees her.

There’s black earth on her hands and she’s barefoot, pulling weeds from a vine’s base as she directs someone else to water something. He can’t quite hear her— his hearing wasn’t ever really the same after that gunshot that Braith had fired by his head, long ago, but he can see just fine, and as she stands and brushes her hands off on her linen apron, she turns, and she sees him. 

Her sunburned face goes calm and quiet, all the care smoothed away, and she walks to him over the earth, a small smile tugging at her wide mouth. “So you’ve come back,” she says when she’s in range to be heard. 

“Mm,” he says, suddenly shy.

“What have you brought?”

“More earth,” he tells her, and drops the sack, opening the mouth and showing her good black dirt. “Last of it, I think.”

She shakes her head. “That’s all right. We have enough here to keep on for good now. Cycles and nutrients and all the— well, you know. Rotting plant matter’s good for the soil. You— you planning on staying?”

“For a bit. If I— if that’s… if there’s a place for me.” He shifts his weight and doesn’t look at her directly: it’ll be easier to pretend he doesn’t care either way. 

“Ben,” she says quietly, and shakes her head, standing on tiptoes to press her forehead to his in a gesture he’s seen Mothers do a hundred times with their sisters, the meaning clear to him: friendship, family, deep affection. “There’s a place for you here always. Don’t you know that by now?”

“Mm,” he mumbles as she pulls away. “Then I— I’ll stay.”

“I’m glad you’re home.” Rey steps back, her smile like sunshine. “You’re making dinner, though.”

He grunts noncommittally, and as he turns, he’s almost bowled over by a charging three-year-old with a mass of dark curls, shrieking as a pair of chubby arms tighten around his knees. The Gink— Baz, she’s calling herself now— is in hot pursuit, laughing as she chases her son. “Ben! I didn’t know you were coming today! Rey said—”

Ben shakes his head and leans down to pick up the boy. “Mm, ‘s fine. Hello, River.”

“Inky!” shouts River, and shrieks with giggles when Ben tickles him. They’re not sure where  _ Inky _ came from: Rey had teased Baz about it coming from  _ Stinky, _ and she’d denied hotly she’d ever called Ben any such thing.  _ He must have heard you from the inside, _ Rose had said, laughing. 

“You’re staying?” Baz pulls her clingy son off Ben and sets him on her hip. 

“Yeah. For a little bit.” Rey closes in and wipes her hands. “Brought some more water, too. It’s on the boat. Couldn’t carry it.”

“Oh, good. We’re almost done drilling that well.” Rey stretches, her back popping. “Soon we won’t even need to waste the guzzoline on the trip to the mainland.”

“I’m sure Rose will appreciate that.” Baz kisses River and sets him down, but he runs right back to Ben, clinging to his thigh. “Sorry. He’s going through a phase.”

“It’s fine,” he repeats, tousling the child’s hair. “C’mon, kid. Let’s walk.”

* * *

Dameron and Finn are entertaining a horde of children with stories as they come back into the village: the huts are in good repair, Ben’s pleased to see, and the open areas are clean and clear. Women and men are busily weaving clothes from old fibers using looms made of windshield wipers and old frames of windows: cooking, roasting fresh veg, laughing with each other. 

“...and when it was spring, the trees would burst into flowers,” Finn was saying to a rapt audience of five year olds, using his hands to illustrate. “Pink, like the sunrise clouds, and when the wind blew, they’d fall down in big drifts like dust, pink and smelling so good…”

Rey parts from Baz and River, who’s enthralled by the story, and already forgetting about Ben as he heads over to the story-circle. Ben watches him go for a moment and thinks about children, about telling stories: you have to keep telling a story for someone to remember it, or a song. Then it can’t die like a person: it’ll live on and on…

“Ben?” says Rey quietly, and he turns to look at her. She’s standing in the doorway of her house, the curtain open, the curtain saying  _ you’re welcome, you’re home, you’re here.  _

He nods, understanding, and steps over the threshold into light, and warmth: they’re both home safe at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're done! happy new year


End file.
